I recently bought a gently used copy of a common style manual which I will be spending a large part of this week learning. (Aside: If you want to save money on a style manual, buy it used from eBay.) There is a wonderful PDF presentation on the internet (“internet” is lowercased according to The Chicago Manual of Style 17^th Edition, one of my favorite manuals) called “How to Learn a Style Guide in 10 Days,” which is highly useful for learning the style manual of your choice. It can be found at https://askcopycurmudgeon.files.wordpress.com/2012/11/learn-a-style-guide.pdf

For an editor like me, who specializes in scientific manuscripts, being proficient in more than one style manual is very important. Scientific journal publishers tend to want manuscripts to conform to either the Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association (APA) or the AMA Manual of Style (AMA). Some publishers even have their own style guide. APA is now on its 7^th edition and AMA on its 11^th. CMoS is on its 17^th edition, as I noted above, and just about every editor should know CMoS because it is considered the “gold standard” of editing, and is defaulted to whenever another style guide has not been specified.

My copy of the new-to-me style manual which I will be learning for the next 10 days is currently sitting on my desk, having arrived less than half a week ago. I cannot wait to crack it open and begin developing proficiency; I will begin tomorrow, since Monday is a good day to start things like this. Personally, I love how the style manuals all have their different nuances and guidelines for things such as the treatment of numbers in text (do we write out one to ten or use the numerals 1 to 10?), capitalization (do we capitalize “Internet” or leave “internet” lowercased?), and closed versus open compounds (is it a “bar stool” or a “barstool”?). If the guidelines in every manual were the same, the world would be a dull place.

If you are an editor or writer, how do you best learn a style manual?

Earlier this month, I completed a project for a good friend who is writing a book with one of her other friends. No, I did not edit their whole book (although I would love to someday). I did, however, format the book’s references. The co-author (my friend) asked that the references be in APA format, and we agreed that the 7^th edition of APA would be the one used.

I formatted and formatted and formatted. The co-author was very satisfied with the work I did. Happy ending, right?

Yes, but it could have had a happier ending for the co-author.

Before she even handed me the project, I told her about Edifix (www.edifix.com), a web-based paid service that will format an author’s references for them.

I have used Edifix once so far, to format 146 references in a scientific review; the journal to which the review was to be submitted required that they be formatted in a specific style. Can you imagine how long it would take an editor to format 146 references by hand?

With Edifix, however, I copied the list of references, pasted them into the indicated space on the web page, selected which format I wanted them in (and there are many choices), clicked a button, and waited for maybe four minutes. Edifix then gave me a document with the references all in the desired format.

Edifix charges for its services monthly and is not cheap. However, for an editor like me who works regularly on scientific research manuscripts, it is worth it.

Back to the story involving the co-author. As I said before, I told her about Edifix before she handed me the project. I wanted her to know that there was a much easier way to format her references than to have me do them by hand. Not that I didn’t want to work on her project, but I felt that it would not be honest to let her know there was an easier (and less expensive) way.

She said to me, “I would feel better having you do them than an automatic service.”

Awww. How sweet.

But she knows for next time.

As for me…of course I enjoy editing, working hard, and making money, but any tool that makes everyone’s life easier should not be kept under wraps.

Nobody likes tests. Am I correct? There is pressure involved. Someone is either literally or figuratively looking down at you, judging your performance.

Unfortunately, tests are a large part of life.

Even professional editors have to take tests sometimes in the form of editing tests.

Whoa! you might think. You mean editors have to be tested at something at which they have proved their worth for years?

Well, sometimes, yes.

It is mostly freelance editors such as myself who need to take editing tests. Sometimes a lucrative gig will make itself known to me, but the person(s) offering the gig want to see how well I can edit before they take me on.

If you, dear reader, are a freelance editor, you have either found yourself in this position before or are soon going to find yourself in this position.

So what is the best way to take an editing test?

The first thing to do (after downloading the file and saving it under the same name with your initials added to the end) is turn on the Track Changes feature in MS Word and set it to All Markup. (If you don’t already know how to do this, please either Google how to do it or purchase a copy of Word 2019 for Dummies by Dan Gookin. Don’t worry, I am not calling you a dummy—this is the actual name of the book.)

Next, make a first pass through the written piece. During this pass, fix obvious spelling, grammatical, and punctuation errors. Check for consistency in things like hyphenation and the use of the Oxford comma.

Then, make a second pass through the piece. Rewrite sentences that sound awkward or incorrect and explain why in the margin comments. If you read any sentence or phrase that is confusing and makes you ask what the author means, query the author in the comments.

Run a spellcheck, do a final save, and you are done! (I should add that you should save the document frequently while you are working.)

Finally, try not to imagine a mean-looking professor breathing down your neck as you edit the test. This is completely counterproductive.

After you have uploaded your finished test, sit back and relax and tell yourself that you are a good editor regardless of the outcome.

Whew! Is it any wonder that so many of us editors have impostor syndrome?

Hello again, dear reader. I have to be honest with you when I say that I almost did not write this post, due to the fact that so many things seemingly have gone wrong in the last few weeks that I am absolutely emotionally drained. If one more thing happens in the wrong way, I may have a nervous breakdown.

Okay, maybe that is an exaggeration, but is sure feels that way. Besides my laptop having to be repaired (which I wrote about last week), there have been things which have evoked feelings in me that range from anxious to ashamed to heavy-hearted. I will not list them here out of regards for my privacy and that of the people I know and love.

So what keeps me sane and functioning?

Well, first of all, there is my faith in Jesus Christ, and talking to Him regularly comforts me a lot during hard times in my life.

Second, there are my loved ones, mainly my husband, family, and friends. They are a great source of comfort as well.

Third, there is editing. For me, being absorbed by a written piece which I am editing is the same as escaping into a good book. I can shut out the rest of the world and my own noisy thoughts and concentrate on the writing in front of me. The more I edit and polish the piece, the more at peace I feel.

When one’s life is hard, one has to continue to work, as we all know. When I worked in laboratories, this was often very hard to do, since one’s joy and happiness often depend on experiments working out…and oftentimes, they do not. But since I enjoy editing so much, I derive peace from working.

Do you get peace and comfort from your work? If not, from what do you get peace and comfort during the hard times in life?

Apologies to my readers for not warning you that I was going to take Easter Sunday off of blogging. This was a long-standing decision, but I neglected to tell you about it in my last post. Mea culpa.

Anyhoo…

This past week, the thing I dreaded the most but knew would eventually happen…took place.

My treasured laptop slowed down immensely on Thursday and I shut it down because I could not use it. I only thank God that I wasn’t in the middle of an editing gig when this happened. In fact, it happened only hours after I had finished my last editing gig. So, praise the Lord again.

The next day, I took the ailing laptop to Staples, specifically to their tech repair desk. The young man who took down my information was extremely polite and helpful. While I used the old desktop in our home to do my work, Staples ran a PC tune-up for free! And I got my laptop back the next night, which was last night.

However…I have yet to hook it up and try it.

I am really scared that something will go wrong and that they didn’t fix it correctly, that I lost significant data, et cetera. Chalk this up to my clinical anxiety, but I’m just plain scared.

I always get scared when I get a new piece of technology or when it gets repaired. This past January, I bought an iPhone 13 Mini to replace my ancient iPhone 6. For the first two and a half weeks that I owned it, I was afraid to touch it. What would happen if I did something wrong? And when I bought my laptop in June 2020, same thing. It took me two days to hook it up and use it.

Luddites (the first syllable rhymes with thud, not with rude) resist technology and avoid it. I do not consider myself a luddite. Some people in the past might have thought I was one, because I did not buy my first smartphone (an iPhone 4) until 2015. By that time, the majority of people my age had smartphones. However, this was for economic/financial reasons.

I consider myself more like the Jawa from Star Wars. They, in fact, love technology…but they are clueless about how to use it. I am not “clueless,” but I’m embarrassed about the number of times I’ve had to go to the Verizon store with my iPhone and say, “Do you know how to do this?”

How about you? Are you more of a Jawa or a luddite? Or neither?

I think that, in the freelancing world, it is often good to be a little stressed. That way, the freelancer is continually aware that they are getting work and are sought after.

For yours truly, the week of March 28 to April 1 of this year was just like that.

I edited a short paper for a client, a much longer paper for another client, a booklet for my church, the weekly program and insert (also for my church), and the text of a new web page for yet another client. (To be fair, the deadline for the much longer paper wasn’t until April 4, but I did the vast majority of the editing during the aforementioned week.) Whew!

And l loved doing it.

Still, editing all of that material in the same five-day period was somewhat stressful. I had to plan carefully and triage everything based on its deadline. My daily planner was invaluable to me during this time, as it is during every week. For me, what works best is to break up a more sizable task into equal-sized pieces and work on one piece every day; I also try to leave one day as a “cushion” in case something comes up and (Heaven forbid) I fall behind. (By the way, please don’t use the expression “wiggle room” in front of me. I detest that term.)

I also had to exercise discipline in my work. No doing laundry while I work; that distracts me when it’s time to transfer clothes from the washer to the dryer or remove clothes from the dryer and fold them. No going out for a walk (although the weather that week was freezing for late March/early April in Maryland) as much as I crave fresh air. Getting up and stretching is okay, but not spending too much time away from the computer.

I even worked Monday evening in order to accommodate all of my deadlines. I am a morning person and I don’t like working in the evening, but an editor has to do what an editor has to do.

Mission accomplished! I met all of my deadlines.

So what did I do that Friday night to relax and treat myself? Cleaned the bathroom.

*shaking my head*

Please let me start out by saying that I am not, repeat, NOT anti-science.

I worked in the biological sciences for years. I loved my science classes in high school and college, and went on to earn a master’s degree in biochemistry. I attended the March for Science in Washington, DC two years in a row (2017 and 2018–both of the years that it took place). I think science is essential for living. Think of all of the vaccines and antibiotics and antivirals that we wouldn’t have if it were not for science.

But science has an ugly side.

And I have experienced it.

Those of us with physical disabilities have a hard time doing it.

I have mild cerebral palsy. I am highly fortunate that I am able to walk, talk, write, and do so many things that people with severe CP cannot do.

However, my CP affects my hand and finger coordination–something essential to running many science experiments. I must work more slowly and more deliberately. This, when I was working in laboratories, did not endear me to some of my bosses, shall we say. In my last scientific research position, I was fired because I could not get the hang of restraining live laboratory mice.

When I was in graduate school, one of my professors flat-out told me that I am not good with my hands and that I should not be working in a scientific laboratory. (This professor also told me that I should “maybe” go into technical writing, which I find ironic, considering that I am now an editor who works in the sciences. Maybe I should have listened to him then?)

The ugly side of science is that it, by nature, makes it hard for those with physical disabilities to succeed in the laboratory. This is nobody’s fault. It’s just the nature of the beast.

If you, dear reader, have a physical disability and are pursuing a career in laboratory science right now, PLEASE don’t give up. You may be more successful than I was. I’m only writing from personal experience here. At the two Marches for Sciences that I attended, I listened to speeches given by scientists who were deaf or blind. I applaud those people immensely and wish I could sit down and hear more of their experiences.

Let me just add that I am still working in science–just not in the laboratory. Science embraced me after all.

The best laid plans of mice and men…and of Suzelle…

Several months ago, I wrote a post about how I was going to take an EFA class on macros in April. Macros, for those of you who are unfamiliar with them, are keyboard shortcuts tied to commands in MS Word. They make an editor’s work go faster and the editor more efficient. And I am all about efficiency in my work and learning how to improve it.

I shuffled my long-term schedule around to accommodate the six weeks during which I would be taking the class. The class was to be from April 18 to May 29.

Alas, last week I received an email from the EFA saying that, unfortunately, the macros class could not begin in April. It would begin later in the year, but not before the end of May.

I understand that things come up in the lives of people and organizations. I am not angry at all about this. Nor am I cursing anyone or anything for it.

I am, however, rather torn. You see, my husband and I have a vacation scheduled for Thursday, June 23 through Sunday, June 26–our first vacation in three years (thanks to the pandemic). We have already put down a deposit at the hotel, and only 75 percent of that deposit is refundable. I am all about complete separation between work and leisure time, and I refuse to take my laptop to this beach hotel and work on my classwork and homework for the class there. Work time is work time; leisure time is leisure time.

On the other hand, I run the risk of falling behind in the class (albeit slightly, but still…) if I do not work on it for four days in a week. And if that week ends up being the first week of class, I am in deep doo-doo.

Bottom line: I have already been in touch with a super-helpful EFA staff member about refunds, and they assured me that the EFA will accommodate refunds when the new class dates are announced. If the new six-week class period overlaps with my vacation, I will be forced to ask for a refund, for the good of both the class and my vacation. After that, I will keep my eyes peeled for when the class will be offered again. I really hope it will be.

And so goes the work/life balance–a very important thing.

I studied science. I have a bachelor’s degree in biology and a master’s degree in biochemistry.

I know that cancer begins with the genes in a cell. The genes cause changes that make the cell cancerous.

Likewise, I know that a virus contains either DNA or RNA (not both, as in a cell). And the DNA or RNA in a virus can mutate. That is how, for example, we get variants of the SARS-CoV-2 virus (the virus that causes COVID-19).

Now, this is where you might think I’m crazy. I sometimes wonder if the genes in cells and viruses are somehow sentient and know what pain and trouble they will cause people when they mutate. For example, one cell in Jenny’s breast tissue might be saying, “Hmmm. I think that in this gene, I will swap a guanine for a cytosine. Let’s see if that teaches her to wear such tight bras!” Bad, bad cell.

Or if the SARS-CoV-2 virus is saying, “Hmmm. Those people think they have beaten me with their vaccines, huh? I’ll just change an adenosine to a thymine over here, and…BAM! The vaccine won’t work and people will suffer again.”

Okay, I admit, that’s weird talk. I know that genes don’t think.

This is where this post turns serious.

Today would have been the 60th birthday of a friend who succumbed to cancer in 2019. He was taken too soon. I remember his funeral at our church: the huge auditorium was close to filled, the worship band played such powerful songs, his children and business partner and wife (a close friend of mine) gave eulogies.

Cancer is such a jerk. My mother survived it and, thankfully, is now in remission, but it made her suffer a great deal and I remember watching her suffer. It wasn’t easy on anyone in the family, especially Mom.

COVID, too, is a jerk. I don’t personally know anyone who died or was hospitalized from it, but I know of people who did. One gentleman I know spoke to me of a young man he knew who was afflicted with the disease. His ventilator was removed only because he had no hope of living and the hospital needed the ventilator for a person who did have hope. And I still can’t get over seeing images on TV of huge refrigerators being used to store bodies.

Sometimes I wish genes could think–specifically, of the horrible potential damage they can do just by mutating one nucleotide base pair. (There is a large number of diseases that can also be caused by gene mutations; it would take days to write about all of them, but the people who have these diseases suffer just as much, if not more.) Then maybe the genes would think twice before they mutate.

Just thinking.

Please allow me to talk a little about my past.

Once upon a time, I was unemployed. I had left the world of laboratory work (or, more accurately, the world of laboratory work chewed me up and spit me out) and I was left jobless. Wanting to continue being a productive member of society, I began job hunting.

I’m sure that everyone today knows that this is done online; long gone are the days of physically going to a potential employer’s office and filling out an application. If you try this today, you will most likely hear, “Go to our website and apply online.”

I have had varying experiences with online applying.

One very popular job board today is Indeed.com. I used this a great, great deal during my job searching days, and it has come a long way since I used it regularly. These days, it can show you the details of a job you are interested in while still showing you the results of your keyword search in another half of the screen. I think this is genius. Back when I was using it, I had to click on the Back button of my browser to get back to my search results from the details of a certain job. Indeed also allows you to create a resume for use on their site–a feature which I have never used, since I like to write my own resume and include it with each job application.

Another popular choice is LinkedIn. Besides being a good form of social media (although at times it does resemble Facebook), LinkedIn has a feature in which you, after setting up your profile, can browse jobs which match your profile. Some of the jobs will even allow you to apply with just your LinkedIn profile. Many, however, will want your profile plus other items, such as a resume and cover letter; some will even want you to fill out an online application as well. Bottom line: if you have a LinkedIn profile (and, in my opinion, you should), make sure to keep it up to date!

The most luck I had while job searching, however, was to look at jobs which were on the company/organization’s own website. Many job postings lurk there while not being found on Indeed, LinkedIn, or other job boards. If you need help deciding on a company whose website to search for jobs, look at the companies that come up on LinkedIn or Indeed, or run a Google search for, say, “Cancer research organizations.”

And what about CareerBuilder.com and Monster.com? They are SO two decades ago. Don’t bother with them.

I wish you the best!