Editor
In 2017, in the middle of my PhD program, I embarked on a little side project to interview leaders of the plain language movement in Canada who were active between 1980 and 1995. I chose that window because it’s within what my former publishing prof John Maxwell called the internet’s historical rain shadow: not old enough to be considered interesting and thus worthy of being documented online but not new enough that it would automatically exist online. Without a concerted effort to fill that gap in our history, information about those events could be lost forever. Continue reading “The plain language movement in Canada, 1980–1995: An oral history”
Tag: Comics
Pedant by proxy
Truing test
Let it stand
Crowd work
For the holidays, why not treat yourself to After the Feast, my little cookbook for turkey dinner leftovers? The PDF is free to download, and print copies raise money for the Qajuqturvik Community Food Centre’s food security and food sovereignty initiatives in Nunavut.
Overload
[Self-promotional non sequitur: Check out After the Feast, my little cookbook for Thanksgiving (and other turkey dinner) leftovers! The PDF is free to download, and print copies raise money for the Qajuqturvik Community Food Centre’s food security and food sovereignty initiatives in Nunavut, which is experiencing a hunger crisis.]
Witch hunt
Unsolicited advice
![Two-frame cartoon. Frame 1: Bespectacled editor sits with curly-haired editor at a table in a café. She says, "It can be so frustrating to work with [industry-standard software] sometimes!" A man in glasses sips coffee at the next table. Frame 2: The man turns around and says, "I couldn’t help overhearing. Why don’t you just use [open-source alternative that lacks the functionality you need for your work, offers no support, and is fundamentally incompatible with your clients’ workflow]? I switched five years ago and haven’t looked back."](https://i0.wp.com/ivacheung.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/07/2025-08-Open_source.png?ssl=1 "\"Libre\" means free, as in free mattress!")
I despise Microsoft and Adobe as much as the next person, but the next time a non-editor tells me to switch to LibreOffice, I’m sending them to this feature comparison and asking them to search for “track changes.”
Out of scope
Camaraderie
