EditorEAC-BC held its first meeting of the 2014–2015 season yesterday evening, and, along with wine and cheese, we got a dose of professional development. Programs chair Roma Ilnyckyj and committee member Frances Peck asked us to share our favourite resources. Here’s a rundown of what people mentioned:
Books
- Words into Type: Although no longer in print, this classic reference still has a lot of good tips about grammar and style.
- Vex, Hex, Smash, Smooch: Let Verbs Power Your Writing by Constance Hale
- The Subversive Copy Editor by Carol Fisher Saller, who edits The Chicago Manual of Style Online’s Q&A. Her blog is also useful, as is her Twitter account.
- EAC-BC’s branch chair, Micheline Brodeur, mentioned that she uses the Chicago Manual of Style for every project. Its Twitter account, which tweets a daily tip, is also worth following.
- Edit Yourself: A Manual for Everyone Who Works with Words by Bruce Ross-Larson.
- Bill Walsh’s Lapsing into a Comma, Yes, I Could Care Less, and blog.
- Woe Is I by Patricia T. O’Conner
- Out at the end of the month is Steven Pinker’s The Sense of Style: The Thinking Person’s Guide to Writing in the 21st Century. (I haven’t written up my review of it yet, but suffice it to say that it will be effusive.)
- Typography for Lawyers by Matthew Butterick, who also has a website, Butterick’s Practical Typography.
- Garner’s Modern American Usage
- On Writing Well by William Zinsser
- Editing by Design by Jan V. White
Websites or blogs
- Language Log
- Language Portal of Canada, where among many useful tools you can also find Peck’s English Pointers.
- The Purdue Online Writing Lab
- APA Style Blog
- New York Times After Deadline blog: mistakes that made it into print, dissected post-mortem.
- Learn English with Emma YouTube channel: An ESL teacher offers tips about grammar and usage.
- Quick and Dirty Tips by Grammar Girl Mignon Fogarty. Follow her on Twitter as well.
- James Harbeck’s word tastings at Sesquiotica
- If you have a Vancouver Public Library card, your card number and PIN will get you access to the full Oxford English Dictionary.
Twitter accounts
On top of the ones already mentioned, members of our group suggested following:
- Adrienne Montgomerie
- Amy Goldstein
- Copyediting
- Katharine O’Moore-Klopf
- Madam Grammar
- Frances Peck (Frances will be hosting a punctuation chat with @Copyediting on Wednesday, September 24—National Punctuation Day. Follow the discussion at #PuncChat)
- Peter Sokolowski
Workshops or classes
Beyond EAC-BC’s excellent professional development seminars and EAC’s annual conference, here are some workshops or classes that attendees have found useful:
- The Tyee Master Class Series
- Geist’s Writer’s Block workshops (No workshops scheduled as of this writing, so the page is blank, but that’s where new workshops will be posted.)
- The American Copy Editors Society annual conference
- International Association of Business Communicators workshops (some available online)
- Professional Writers Association of Canada‘s professional development events
- Canadian Authors Association‘s webinars and events
- The Society for Technical Communication Canada West Coast Chapter‘s workshops and TechComm Café series
- The Vancouver Public Library‘s series of workshops on self-publishing, which may interest editors
- The Red Pencil in the Woods conference, run by the Northwest Independent Editors Guild
- SFU’s Publishing Workshops and courses through the Writing and Communications Program—favourites among members
Upcoming professional development events include:
- Word Vancouver, September 24 to 28, which will host a series of free workshops on everything from making chapbooks to creating a publishing roadmap to digital publishing.
- Communication Convergence, October 5, which explores “the tendency for different communication fields over time to apply a common range of methods.” Frances Peck will moderate a panel (of which I will be a member). Tickets here. (STC and EAC-BC members get a discount, and students get a special rate.)
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This list is by no means exhaustive, of course—it includes only what people mentioned at the meeting. Add your favourites in the comments.
If you found this list helpful, you may also be interested in the results of last year’s season-launching audience-participation meeting: Editors’ show and tell: time-saving tips and tricks.