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Category: Editors

Confirmation

Twelve-frame cartoon. Frame 1: An author sits at a table with Bespectacled editor. He points to a spot on his manuscript on the table. He says, “Can you explain why you made this change?” Frame 2: Bespectacled editor says, “Yeah, sure. I looked it up, and the company’s website said they were founded in 1989, not 1998.” Frame 3: The authors points to another page and says, “And this one?” Frame 4: Bespectacled editor says, “I looked it up, and in Fiona’s memoir she spells her last name with an uppercase D and an uppercase M.” Frame 5: The author points to another place in the manuscript and says, “What about this edit here?” Frame 6: Bespectacled editor says, “I looked it up, and the dictionary we’re using spells the noun form with a C, not an S.” Frame 7: The author identifies another place in the manuscript and says, “Uh-huh. And this change?” Frame 8: Bespectacled editor says, “I looked it up, and that’s how the Chicago Manual of Style suggests capitalizing Russian transliterations.” Frame 9: The author puts his hands on his hips and says, “You’re just looking a bunch of stuff up? Why should I pay you for that?!” Frame 10: Bespectacled editor says, “Well, are YOU gonna do it?” Frame 11: The author and editor stare at each other, silent. Frame 12: Still silent, the author lowers his head in shame.Click through to enlarge!

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Author Iva CheungPosted on April 1, 2025March 30, 2025Format ImageCategories Editing, Editors, FreelancingTags Comics, Fact checkingLeave a comment on Confirmation

Fibliography

A robot (ReferenceBot) with a square head, rectangular body, and square hands and feet sits on a rolling office chair at a desk with a keyboard and monitor. Bespectacled editor stands on the other side of the desk. ReferenceBot says, in a robotic voice, “What do you mean they just make up sources?! Whatever happened to taking pride in one’s own world?!” The image caption says, “ReferenceBot learns about large language models.”

(If this is your first time meeting ReferenceBot, learn about him here.)

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Author Iva CheungPosted on March 1, 2025February 24, 2025Format ImageCategories Editing, EditorsTags Artificial intelligence, Citation, ComicsLeave a comment on Fibliography

Holiday

Six-frame cartoon. Frame 1: An editor sits at a table with his laptop open. He says, "With Easter so late this year, it’ll be such a long stretch before I get a holiday. Frame 2: Bespectacled Editor sips her tea and says, “You know, if you were a freelancer like me, any day could be a holiday.” Frame 3: The in-house editor says, “Uh-huh. And when was the last time you took a day off?” Frames 5 and 6: The two editors just stare at each other, unmoving.” Frame 7: The in-house editor says, “Well…?” and Bespectacled Editor responds, “I’m thinking!!!”
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Author Iva CheungPosted on February 1, 2025January 26, 2025Format ImageCategories Editing, Editors, Freelancing, UncategorizedTags ComicsLeave a comment on Holiday

Copilot is my god

9-frame cartoon. Frame 1: Bespectacled editor is having a phone conversation with an author. She says, "… and I was hoping you could help me understand the third paragraph on page 2. What is 'diagonal supply chain buoyancy'?" Frame 2: The author says, "I have no idea." Frame 3: Bespectacled editor says, "O…K… Well, what were you hoping to convey when you wrote it?" Frame 4: The author says, "Oh, I didn’t write that part. My AI program must have written it." Frame 5: Bespectacled editor looks into the camera at the viewer. Frame 6: Bespectacled editor says, "So, um, I would strongly suggest carefully reading the output of any generative AI tools to confirm that the text is saying what you intended." Frame 7: The author says, "Isn’t that your job?" Frame 8: Bespectacled editor is silent, looking at her phone. Frame 9: We see the author holding his phone away from his ear as an exasperated scream comes through on it."

Dedicated to Jen Anderson. Click through to enlarge!
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Author Iva CheungPosted on January 1, 2025January 1, 2025Format ImageCategories Editing, EditorsTags Artificial intelligence, ComicsLeave a comment on Copilot is my god

Out of sorts, part 2

4-frame cartoon. Frame 1: Two artisans work in a 15th-century European print studio. One says, “Well, that was the last of the italic effs we’ve had to make into long esses. Should we move on to the roman ones?” The other one says, “Sure! But what if…” Frame 2: The second artisan continues: “What if instead of filing off the crossbar completely, we just filed part of it off?” Frame 3: The first artisan holds up a piece of lead type that looks like an f with one side filed off but with a small nub left on the other. He says, “You mean like this?” Frame 4: A person with wild hair peering through the window of the shop wearing a shirt with the word “SICKOS” says, “YES… HA HA HA… YES!” as a tribute to the Stan Kelly comic published in the Onion.

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See Out of sorts, part 1, for, uh, context, I guess?

Author Iva CheungPosted on December 1, 2024November 27, 2024Format ImageCategories Book publishing, Books, Design, EditorsTags ComicsLeave a comment on Out of sorts, part 2

Modern haunting


12-frame cartoon. Frame 1: Bespectacled Editor walks in a meadow. Frame 2: She says, "What a lovely scene." Frame 3: She is suddenly surrounded by gaunt, ghoulish girls with sunken eyes, stringy hair, and a torn gown. They say, in unison, "Another comment is progress." Frame 4: Bespectacled Editor tries to back away from the ghoulish girls. They are all still saying, "Another comment is in progress." Frames 5 and 6: She continues to run away from the ghoulish girls. Frame 6: She finally gets away from the girls and she bends over, panting, exhausted. Frame 8: Bespectacled Editor stars saying, "I'm not sure I understand…" when a giant claw comes down from the sky. Frame 9: The giant claw lifts her up. Frame 10: The giant claw transports her high across a vast landscape. Frame 11: The claw sets her down in a desert. She faces another ghoulish girl with sunken eyes, but this one is a rusty red colour. Frame 12: We see a close-up of the ghoulish girl's face, and she says, "Please post your comment."
(Technically the November cartoon, but I wanted to catch the tail end of spooky season.) Bonus panel!
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Author Iva CheungPosted on October 31, 2024October 28, 2024Format ImageCategories Editing, EditorsTags Comics, Microsoft Word1 Comment on Modern haunting

Out of sorts, part 1

Four-frame cartoon. The top three frames are labelled “Somewhere in Europe in the mid-15th century*.” (The asterisk leads the reader to the bottom of the cartoon, which says, “Not historically accurate.”) Frame 1: Two workers are in a print studio with a type case and a Gutenberg-style press. One says, “I don’t have enough esses to finish typesetting this page!” The other says, “We’ll have to improvise.” Frame 2: The second worker reaches into the type case and pulls out an italic f. He says, “This kind of looks like an ess? Maybe we’ll have to file the crossbars off a bunch of effs.” Frame 3: The first worker says, “Good thinking! Let’s do it. But aren’t you concerned that might confuse future OCR systems?” The second worker says, “Future what?” Frame 4 is labelled “Present day.” Curly-haired editor and Bespectacled editor are at a table, working. Curly-haired editor says, “How’s your proofread going?” Bespectacled editor says, “You mean the catalogue of the fcience books publifhed during the Renaifsance? Abfolutely fpectacularly.”
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Author Iva CheungPosted on October 1, 2024September 30, 2024Format ImageCategories Book publishing, Editing, Editors, ProofreadingTags Comics, Long sLeave a comment on Out of sorts, part 1

New edition

One-frame cartoon. Bespectacled editor and Curly-haired editor are sitting at a table with their laptops. Bespectacled editor says, "A'ight. I think I'm ready to switch over to Chicago 18." Curly-haired editor reaches over, holding a pair of sunglasses, and says, "Take these. You'll need 'em."Erin Brenner has put together an amazing resource for editors adjusting to the new edition of the Chicago Manual of Style (including the electric yellow rectangle on the web version).

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Author Iva CheungPosted on September 1, 2024August 26, 2024Format ImageCategories Editing, EditorsTags Chicago Manual of Style, ComicsLeave a comment on New edition

Microsoft Read Aloud

A 15-panel cartoon. We see a silhouettes of the profile of Bespectacled Editor and Microsoft’s Clippy on a blue background, reminiscent of the Electric Company’s phonics lessons. Panel 1: Bespectacled Editor pronounces “w.” Panel 2: Clippy pronounces “ing.” Panel 3: Both say “wing” at the same time. Panel 4: Bespectacled Editor pronounces “str.” Panel 5: Clippy pronounces “ing.” Panel 6: Both say “string” at the same time. Panel 7: “th” appears on screen but the letter T is red and underlined, suggesting it was a tracked changed in Microsoft word. Bespectacled Editor pronounces “th.” Panel 8: Clippy pronounces “ing.” Panel 9: Bespectacled Editor says, “thing” but Clippy says “t-hing.” Bespectacled editor says, “What? No.” Panel 10: Bespectacled Editor says, “Just read the whole word. It’s ‘thing.’” Panel 11: Bespectacled Editor leaves the frame but says, “I’ll go hid the markup to see if that helps you.” Panel 12: Bespectacled Editor is back in frame and says, “Ready to try again?” Panel 13: Bespectacled Editor pronounces “th.” Panel 14: Clippy pronounces “ing.” Panel 15: Bespectacled Editor says, “thing” but Clippy says “t-hing.” Bespectacled editor says, “Goddammit.”

(It occurs to me that this cartoon might make zero sense if you didn’t grow up watching the Electric Company.)

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Author Iva CheungPosted on August 1, 2024August 1, 2024Format ImageCategories Editing, EditorsTags Comics, Microsoft Word3 Comments on Microsoft Read Aloud

Triage

Four-frame cartoon. Frame 1: Three editors stand across from the boss at his desk. He says, “We’re extremely crunched for time, so no making any changes unless you’re correcting outright errors, OK?” Frame 2: He continues, “That means no adding serial commas, no changing hyphens to en dashes—we’re even leaving parallelism issues.” Frame 3: Bespectacled editor raises her hand. The boss says, “Yes?” Frame 4: Bespectacled editor says, “What markup should we use if we don’t want you to *change* something but we want you to know we *noticed* it?” Boss facepalms in frustration.
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Author Iva CheungPosted on July 1, 2024June 28, 2024Format ImageCategories Editing, Editors, ProofreadingTags ComicsLeave a comment on Triage

Posts pagination

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Recent Posts

  • Passing through
  • Confirmation
  • Fibliography
  • Holiday
  • Copilot is my god
  • Out of sorts, part 2
  • Modern haunting
  • Out of sorts, part 1
  • New edition
  • Microsoft Read Aloud

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