Come along and join us at 6.00 for 6.30 pm in the Friends Lounge of the National Library,
This is a 'must-attend' workshop for every editor interested in the process of accreditation.
Louise Forster and special guest Robin Bennett, Chair of the Accreditation Board, will present the workshop, updating members on the progress of accreditation, following up matters raised at our 2005 conference and exploring the accreditation process itself.
This will be a hands-on workshop and a very interactive meeting, so be ready to ask questions, to participate in the discussion and to review the suitability of different kinds of text and other evidence for inclusion in a sample portfolio.
You can, if you wish, prepare for the meeting by looking at our web notice board, which you can find at <www.editorscanberra. org/notices.htm> and:
We're expecting a big crowd, so come along early, enjoy the refreshments and engage with your fellow editors at a lively and informative meeting.
- Next meeting: accreditation workshop
- From the President
- IPEd notes
- At the typeface
- February talk - effecting organisational change
- My grab bag … ice cream, anyone, at -89°C?
- Track changers with Chris Pirie
- Thinking about words
- Ed•Ex 2006 - it's racing along
- Copyright and deadlines
Your committee spent much of the February meeting updating a document that sets out the roles and responsibilities of committee members. The revised text will be up on our website soon.
Afterwards I couldn't help reflecting on two things. One is the extent to which we rely on just a few people to keep the society going. At the moment, for example, we have no fewer than four former presidents on the committee; it would be interesting to tot up just how many years of dedication to the society that represents. Remember, all society members are welcome at committee meetings, which we hold at the office of WHH, 14-16 Brisbane Avenue, Barton, at 12.30 pm on the Thursday before the general meeting.
The second is the extent to which the functioning of the society depends on how the committee works as a team. As individuals we committee members are interdependent; if someone is unable to do something essential, for example, someone else has to pick up the slack. (So I'm sorry for the rather ordinary quality of the wine at our last general meeting - the miracle is that there was any at all.)
As you will see elsewhere in this newsletter, planning is proceeding apace on Ed•Ex, so save money by registering early! We are indeed fortunate that Kate Burridge of Monash University and Janet Mackenzie, author and liaison officer for the Institute of Professional Editors (IPEd), have agreed to participate. Both are inspiring and thought-provoking speakers.
As you are aware by now, the theme of Ed•Ex will be 'relationships'. Earlier this month I had the pleasure of attending a gathering organised by the local branch of the Australian and New Zealand Society of Indexers, with the worthy aim of promoting networking between indexers, editors and technical communicators. Thanks to Louise Forster, who spoke on accreditation, and to the other society members who attended. Perhaps we could host the next such occasion?
As your IPEd delegate, I've been involved in formulating a response to an article by Professor Pam Peters in the March issue of Blue Pencil,* the newsletter of the NSW society. She has initiated what looks like being a stimulating debate on IPEd's future direction and I hope to be able to give you a more detailed update shortly.
Finally, I urge everyone to come along to the March general meeting - accreditation is a topic that concerns all working editors who wish to be regarded as professionals in their chosen field. These workshops are taking place in all the editors' societies across Australia and are the best opportunity for you to find out at first hand what the proposed accreditation scheme will involve and how it will affect you. I'll be overseas, but I thank Ted Briggs in advance for standing in for me at the meeting.
Virginia Wilton
* At <www.editorsnsw.com/pdfs/blue pencil/bp 2006/bp_mar_06.pdf>.
IPEd's teleconference in mid-February was a welcome chance to review progress made during the summer. The Interim Council has plans well advanced for a new website which will offer a national forum for members and ease IPEd's internal communications and improve record-keeping and archiving.
The Canberra society has offered to hold a sub-account for IPEd funds as an interim measure until IPEd becomes a formal body. Most societies have formally agreed to the proposed levy of $20 per member to help with the initial costs of setting up the national organisation and have decided how best to raise the money.
Workshops are being held in each state and territory to explain the assessment process and hear editors' concerns. The Accreditation Board, chaired by Robin Bennett (Qld), will bring together the information from these workshops to plan the information kit for applicants and the guidelines for assessors. Board members will also respond to participants' questions in CredAbility, the Board's monthly column, to begin in April.
The Board is planning to make a detailed presentation to the national conference in Hobart in May 2007. Societies have nominated distin-guished editors to assess the first round of applications. A list of their names and brief biographical details will be published shortly, and a very impressive list it is.
We welcome the new convenor of the Promotions Working Group, Kathie Stove (SA). Kathie was the leader of the team that created Australian Standards for Editing Practice, so we look forward to her contribution.
The National Organisation Working Group led by Trischa Mann (Vic.) is developing the proposal for a national organisation, for presentation to members probably by mid to late 2006. If members accept the proposal, the new body will be registered soon after.
The Education Working Group under Rosemary Luke (SA) is surveying the formal courses in editing offered in Australia by universities, TAFE, private providers and the editors' societies. Its survey will provide a basis for future planning to develop education for editors. These energetic people are also looking into mentoring, so the group's official name is now the Education, Training and Mentoring Working Group.
The Standards Revision Working Group, convened by Shelley Kenigsberg (NSW), is updating Australian Standards for Editing Practice. The group is considering a more thorough revision, to rewrite the document in a form that can be used for competency-based learning and training. This would enable the editors profession to meet demands from an industrial environment that wants more formal qualifications. They would welcome more members, especially if they have expertise in developing training packages.
Meanwhile, down in Hobart, the conference committee is making good progress in organising the 2007 conference, which has the theme 'From inspiration to publication'. For more information, see <www.tas-editors.org.au/conference2007.htm>.
Janet Mackenzie, Liaison officer
At the Typeface: selections from the newsletter of the Victorian Society of Editors. Edited by Janet Mackenzie; published by Society of Editors (Victoria) Inc. 2005; 356 + xii pages; paperback; ISBN:0-646-45165-0; rrp $30.00 + $10 postage.
Meryl Potter reviews the book in the March 2006 issue of Blue Pencil, the NSW Society's newsletter. Find it at <www.editorsnsw.com/pdfs/blue pencil/bp 2006/bp_mar_06.pdf>.
We are offered the book at the discounted price of $25 + $10 p&p, using the order form in Blue Pencil.
Isolation has become the typical working environment for editors. After more than a decade of downsizing and outsourcing, fewer in-house options remain. Those that do exist are getting smaller. One driver for this trend is changes to the government publishing sector, which provides a substantial amount of editing work in Canberra, notably:
• centralisation and development of coordinated Commonwealth Government publishing in the 1960s with the creation of the Australian Government Publishing Service (AGPS)
• adoption of electronic publishing and devolution in the 1990s, which saw the closure of the AGPS.
The publishing industry in Canberra is now highly fragmented but, even so, it presents opportunities for experienced, novice and aspiring editors. Clients' relative lack of knowledge about the publishing process provides all editors with opportunities to influence both the quality and style of publications.
A quick survey of freelance editors in Canberra found a dozen reasons for calling in an outside editor. These include_trying to force publications to completion, and because the boss values editing although staff do not really see the need for it.
Other reasons are to pass off more and more responsibility for the publication to the editor or to smarten-up a document's layout by setting styles (find that one in the Australian Standards for Editing Practice!). Also to bring a multi-authored document, often from a committee with all the politics that implies, into one voice (a virtual rewrite), and so on and so forth…
It is clear that editing is, well, not just editing. More than ever before, editors have become de facto trainers.
The Accreditation FAQ on the CASE website puts it neatly as: 'the subtleties of the editorial art such as negotiating with authors must be learnt on the job'.
Some of these subtleties are illustrated in the case studies below (the names have, of course, been changed).
This very small government office of only two full-time employees and a part-time CEO is required to produce a major environmental report every three years (some 6700 web pages and related files for the 2000 report).
Over seven years and three reports, the office has progressed from having never worked with a professional editor, and wondering why anyone would pay for one, to insisting that critical sections are edited by an outside editor. It marks a recognition that editing is as valuable as graphic design, data analysis, and technical writing.
Sunset Agency has a very mixed reputation with Canberra editors, although the agency no longer exists in its own right.
Those fortunate enough to work with people in one small section encountered authors who wanted errors to be discovered and corrected. The publishing process was well understood. Working in this environment was easy.
The rest of the agency was entirely different. You know something is wrong when staff are indignant when they discover that even one word has been changed. There is a culture of blaming contractors, the brief is changed mid-project without notifying the editor, the officer that the editor is dealing with either goes on holiday mid project or leaves the agency altogether, every deadline is missed - despite the editor's best efforts - because of staff inaction, staff are unwilling or unable to learn from past experience, and the agency does not pay on time.
This medium-sized conservative organisation produces more than 60 reports a year and each must be accurate and letter-perfect. After much deliberation the agency contracted a freelance editor to prepare a style guide and guarantee the required quality and consistency of their reports.
These case studies demonstrate that there is more to editing than editing. People skills such as patience, tact, good communication skills, initiative, perseverance, flexibility, respect for others' points of view, and strong client negotiation and education skills are also required.
Interestingly, these agents of influence are only implicit in the Australian Standards for Editing Practice developed by the Council of Australian Societies of Editors (now IPEd). One of the tasks of the Standards Revision Working Group set up after the Melbourne national conference is to make these skills explicit.
With increasing industry fragmentation and fewer in-house employment opportunities, editors have had to take more responsibility for their own training. Some of the biggest challenges lie in educating clients about the role of editing in the publishing process and persuading them to accept changes.
It is well established that editors come into the profession along a variety of paths. Almost all will have at least one tertiary qualification, one not usually directly related to either editing or publishing. Such diverse backgrounds influence editors' approaches to skills development.
The available formal and informal options generally fall into three categories: experience, mentoring and training.
Many highly regarded editors have no formal training. While experience develops expertise over time, it can be haphazard and stressful. Nevertheless, learning on the job is invaluable and one quickly learns how to invoice and tender for jobs, and the value of reference tools such as the Style Manual.
Unfortunately, in today's industrial climate mentors are rare. Editors are expected to 'hit the ground running'. However, it takes time and mutual trust for freelancers to build up a network of peers, as freelancers are reluctant to invest time in a potential competitor. Nevertheless, societies of editors can and do play a vital role in developing peer mentoring opportunities: at meetings, designated training sessions and mini-conferences.
Because of the diverse training needs of editors, societies are best placed to advise on and cater for their members' training needs. In any case, no single solution will work for the individual or the profession as a whole - and ultimately, it is a case of caveat emptor. (See our website for a list of training providers.)
The publication of the editorial standards has clearly enhanced professional visibility and pride in achievements. And editors will be assessed and accredited against the revised standards to be launched at the Hobart conference in 2007. The accreditation board should have no difficulty assessing the technical or hard skills. They are explicit in the standards so editors can address them directly in the portfolios they submit. In the broader education and training context, the soft skills are difficult to report and assess. So a challenge persists in assessing them effectively.
The UK examination method of assessing proof-readers has proved to be quite onerous. Fortunately, IPEd has rejected assessment by examination and a multi-tiered accreditation system. A demonstration of the required skills via portfolio is likely to prove more workable.
Hence, a review of the standards is an opportunity to harmonise the content, style and intent of this very important document. The challenge then is to develop a transparent, equitable, accountable and relatively simple accreditation process based on the revised standards.
The responsibility of editors is to provide evidence of their competence in a range of skills. The responsibility of the accreditation board is to assess the evidence against explicit, skills-based standards endorsed by industry. And societies of editors can assist applicants to prepare their portfolios by holding workshops for that purpose.
Editors have nothing to fear from accreditation. It is, after all, voluntary. Nevertheless, it is a bit like inviting the Australian Taxation Office into your home - and paying for the pleasure!
Even so, for many editors a major indicator of success is not just the quality of the publications they work on, but also the impact they, as skilled professionals, have on an organisation. Persuading an organisation to value editing, understand its role, and continue to employ editors is already a very high achievement.
Cathy Nicoll and Helen Topor
(but, alas, necessarily edited to a fraction of its former length, and without the references or tables of training providers. In view of their value, the latter are now available on our website at <www.editorscanberra.org/providers.doc>, with a link from the notice board.)
Well, I never thought I'd be lost for words, but words are not enough to describe my recent day off from writing and editing - a day flight over Antarctica.
Flying over that vast continent, sometimes quite low, and in a crystal clear atmosphere, I got an amazing appreciation of the smallness of this planet - just how close we are to each other at around Latitude 60°S. The geography of Gondwanaland came to life, and the split of India, South America, Africa and finally Australasia from Antarctica became very real.
The Antarctic is about twice the size of Australia - and we flew for four hours over an area not much bigger than Victoria, zig-zagging and doing figures-of-eight and circles over mountains and glaciers, and swooping at dizzy angles over ice valleys filled with smooth white glacial ice and the 'dirty' ice of changing seasons.
From Sydney we had hoped to go due south, over Hobart, to encounter the odd happenings at the magnetic South Pole - at that point, compasses go haywire. However, cloud cover forced our captain to choose a different route, so we turned east at about Nowra and headed for a more easterly part of the Antarctic coast. We then travelled east along the coast, getting our first glimpse of ice floes - broken flat slabs of ice in the Southern Ocean as we approached the Antarctic coast through its almost permanent coastal cloud cover near the former Russian base, Leningradskaya. From there on, we travelled close to the coastline where the frozen wilderness meets the coastal ice shelf, and started to see glacier after glacier including the huge Rennick Glacier, icebergs (sometimes tilted so that we could see the compacted sapphire blue ice), pancake ice (for all the world as though someone had thrown a heap of pikelets into the sea), ice rippled by the effects of winds, wind-blown snow dunes, and at this time of year, quite a lot of the dark rocky moraine carried along by glaciers and exposed to the elements as ice has melted a little for the summer.
Our normal flying level was about 35 000 ft above sea level, but we dropped down to about 10 000 ft to get a good view, and this meant that in spots we were only about 2500 ft above the tops of the mountains we were flying close to. This felt much lower, almost as if you could reach out and touch the mountains.
We flew close to just one base - a recently-abandoned Italian base at Terra Nova Bay. The red roofs of the huts were clearly distinguishable from our vantage point in the sky. We also flew close to two of the main mountains in the area - Mt Minto and Mt Melbourne - both magnificent sights, and almost to Mawson Glacier, McMurdo Sound and a distant view of Mt Erebus. But what impressed me most was the utter vastness and loneliness of it. My mind went to the explorers like Mawson, Scott, Amundsen and Shackleton, and I was left in awe of their exploits in this magical but forbidding continent. My earlier drive across the desert between Broken Hill and Adelaide became very tame indeed!
Our captain let us in on a conversation with a meteorologist at the end of her summer at Australia's Davis base. Asked what she would most look forward to on returning to Australia, she said 'A shower every day'. Water is scarce at Davis, and showering is restricted. Other scientists were on hand on board to tell us about the history and geography of Antarctica, the features of the landscape, the treaties set up for the care and protection of the area by the nations who are responsible for sections of it, and some of the scientific work being done.
This was a flight to remember forever, but, as the tour director warned, a flight that is incredibly difficult to describe to anyone who hasn't done it. I have come away with a feeling of one-ness with a part of the earth that had thus far eluded me. I appreciate much better the exploits of those who opened up the territories, I have a deeper understanding of our place in Gondwanaland, and I feel closer than I had thought possible to the people of South America and other land masses that, like Australia, were originally joined to Antarctica.
To say that everything was white is quite wrong - the colours of the sea, the ice and the rocky terrain were different at every twist and turn on our journey over the ice. The memories may fade over time, and the locations become confused, but I have loads of photos, maps, videos and books to remind me of probably the best day-trip ever, and a bunch of new words to describe ice. Although it was the wrong time of year to see the southern lights (Southern Aurora), we were treated to a magnificent sunset as we returned to Sydney - a brilliant end to a brilliant day.
And yes, they served ice cream as we got our first glimpse of ice!
© Elizabeth Manning Murphy (2006)
Chris Pirie talks to Louise Forster about editing, and her interest in rocks and pigs and other things.
Chris, you're one of the society's distinguished editors and one of three nominated accreditation assessors from our society. I'm sure our members will be interested in knowing a little more about you and your background.
I think to some extent my background has been useful to my work as an editor. I grew up on a property in the country, in a family where reading and word games were big interests. I spent 10 years at boarding school and then went to university, where I studied French, Italian and politics. After university I lived in Europe for four years, in various countries, doing various types of work. When I came back from Europe, through an idle conversation at a dinner party in 1978 I ended up with a job in Sydney with the publisher Bay Books.
My first job with Bay Books involved researching and writing articles for an encyclopaedia. They were up to the F's, so I was given 'frogs and toads', 'false teeth', 'fuchsias', and two others. I couldn't find anything about fuchsias anywhere until I realised after about a week of looking that I couldn't spell it either.
I did that job freelance from home for a couple of months, then Bay Books invited me to work in-house. At that stage learning to be an editor was a seat-of-the-pants business.
I worked at Bay Books for a couple of years, eventually becoming managing editor. Then I went to live in Tasmania, where I freelanced for a bit. When I came back from Tasmania in 1983 I thought I would carry on freelancing while I looked for a real job. I haven't found the real job yet: I've been freelancing, which I love, ever since.
Why do you like editing?
I like editing because of the problem solving that's required. I love language and I love organising it and learning new things about it. I'm into crosswords as well - another problem-solving pursuit.
A lot of things are expected of editors and certainly that ability to deal with the client is fundamental.
It's an ability to make them confident about what you're doing. I also find, especially if it's a one-on-one job, that your relationship with the author is actually quite intimate. So you have to be able to get on; you have to be able to see eye to eye - or mind to mind. I mean, you might agree to disagree about two spaces after a full stop but you really have to understand each other. From my perspective it's quite an intimate experience being an editor, especially for a big book.
What about the technology?
I use my computer but I don't edit on screen; I edit on paper. A person I've been working with for, oh, 10 years now keys in all the changes. I don't like our dependence on computers.
Before computers, we used to work on paper. I suppose there were dangers with that too - losing the manuscript and having to do it again. Recently, I had been working on a manuscript for about six weeks and was virtually finished with it when we had the bushfire in Yarralumla. That fire came very close to my house and I was out in my garden hosing the fence and thinking, 'Oh, my God, the manuscript's inside. I don't want to have to do it again'.
What's the future for the profession?
The same as it's always been. Perhaps we'll work on different types of documents, but really it's still an interpreting, explaining, facilitating type of role. I don't think it will change from that. We have to be able to respond to changes in the environment, but fundamentally it's the same sort of role.
If we have accredited editors people may be a little bit more willing to pay for someone with that status. That's very different from when I started editing in 1978. Back then, it was a cottage industry; you probably did it while the baby was sleeping.
I asked one of my informants what I should talk to you about. She gave me some key words, one of which was 'rocks'.
Yes, I like rocks. I used to live near Nimmitabel and I have a few pieces of the columnar basalt from that area in my garden. I'm a closet geographer, actually. That was my big subject when I was at school.
Do you collect big rocks or little rocks?
Anything. Usually fairly small because I don't have the capacity to cart around big ones.
I'm on the track of a particular rock at the moment, which involves quite a trek to somewhere. There are many of those rocks in this place but the place is very hard to get to. It will be an expedition with my sister. We have to set aside a day to do it.
Speaking of rocks, I once did a book for an opal miner, a long time ago. He was from Yugoslavia and had come to Lightening Ridge. He paid me partly in opals - quite a few.
Another key word: 'gardening'?
The first book I wrote was about gardening. I like gardens. My mother was a wonderful gardener. I find gardening is one of those things that I get annoyed about because I think, 'I have to go and do that'. But once I've done it I feel good.
Crosswords?
Mm, I like crosswords perhaps too much. I do at least one cryptic crossword every day. Crosswords are great because they're a good way to accumulate words. There are lots of words I have learnt by doing crosswords. It's what I call brain gym and is something I do after breakfast.
What else do you do for relaxation?
I swim. Read - surprisingly. I like cooking and music. I like collecting pigs.
Real pigs?
I used to have a real pig, who was a revelation as an animal, but she got struck by lightning, poor Rooty-Toot. I've taken up collecting handcrafted pigs. I've got a lot of pigs, as well as a lot of stones.
Is there anything else that you'd like to tell us?
I hope that accreditation and the formation of the Institute of Professional Editors brings a degree of professionalism to how we editors are perceived. Part of that is people not charging ridiculously small amounts of money for their work.
We may need to think about how we promote our services: for example, talking to people at medical conferences about the benefits of engaging science editors; writing pieces on accreditation for newspapers. When the time is right, we should have a publicity campaign to let the world know that we have a professional institute, that our editors are accredited, and that we mean business. Perhaps our slogan should be 'Editors. We mean business'.
Louise Forster and Chris Pirie
'Muttering, Slim put his cold, damp hand on her arm and pinched her flesh. She [Miss Blandish] didn't move. She grimaced and closed her eyes.' (from No Orchids for Miss Blandish by James Hadley Chase, 1906-85)
The package of money that Slim pushed her way would possibly count as a blandishment, 'words or actions designed to persuade'. But more often blandishments are verbal: soft flattery to coax or cajole, and these were having no impact on the unhappy Miss Blandish, kidnapped twice over. The word has its origin in the French word blandices (like the English word, mostly found in the plural), itself from blandir, coming from the Latin blandiri, to flatter, caress or pay compliments. While we still sometimes use the English word 'blandishment', my 1992 Hachette French dictionary mutters 'rare, litt.' against blandices, and doesn't even mention blandir or any of its derivatives. Latin, on the other hand, developed a number of compound words from blandiri, including the lovely blandiloquentia, from which we get the English word blandiloquence (glib persuasive speech).
Why on earth should we care about these words, that are increasingly falling out of use? Words are our currency and our stock-in-trade, and vital to our functioning as editors. We build up our stock-in-trade by reading and 'thinking about words'. I believe that the more we know about how words evolve and sometimes pass into extinction as fashions in the language change, the better we understand the working vocabulary we use every day.
That word 'blandishments' appears in the 16th century, a hundred years before the now rarely-heard 'blandish', and has stood the test of time better. The idea of the smooth talker has links to 'bland' (Latin blandus) but bland usually implies that something is rather insipid, so the name 'Blandish' may not conjure up a very exciting personality for our Miss.
Often it's a suave fellow doing the blandishing, although Slim probably wouldn't qualify there. The Latin word suavis originally meant sweet or agreeable, and this was the sense of the word in English until the mid-19th century, when it took on its present application to the blandly polite or urbane. The Italians still use soave with the original sense, and the wine with that name, grown in the north of Italy near Verona, is not overly sweet and can be most agreeable!
Coax has certainly changed its meaning. In 16th century England a cokes was a fool, so that to make a cokes of someone was to fool them. The word 'cokes' probably comes from cockney, then a generic derogatory term for a townsman. Nowadays 'coax' means rather 'to make a pet of' - we may try to sweetly persuade someone to do something they didn't first intend, but no longer necessarily with the idea of making a fool of them. (The OED points out that fond has gone through a similar change since the 16th century; originally implying 'foolish', it now of course means having a strong liking or admiration for someone.) Likewise cajole: among its early French spellings was cageoler, meaning to chatter senselessly like a jay bird (the French for 'jaybird' is geai, pronounced zhay), but now used just for talking someone over. Even flatter has come a long way from its earlier sense of 'caress', although flattery may be a form of verbal caressing.
Persuade has come down to us more or less untouched by time. The Latin word persuadere means just what it sounds like, and the initial per- makes it a stronger form of suadere, to advise. (Dissuade is the opposite - it carries that familiar Latin prefix dis- that reverses almost everything it touches.) Stronger than any of the above is coerce: its Latin root means to confine, and it now has the sense of using force to achieve some end.
Flattery may indeed get you everywhere, but if it is to succeed in persuasion you may have to pay compliments to someone. 'Compliment' is often confused these days with complement, but the spelling distinction is fairly recent, dating only from the late 17th century. Before then words with either sense were spelt with 'e' not 'i', meaning 'fulfilling a courtesy', and hence with links to completeness. Only later did it adopt the present spelling and become the 'neatly turned remark implying praise' that we know today. The confusion is equally rife with the adjectives complementary (something that adds to something else to make a whole) and complimentary. It's rather nice to book into a hotel and have your welcome completed with a complimentary (that is, a free) bottle of champagne (although 'free' in this instance may be rather illusory…).
In the event Miss Blandish was dealt with rather forcibly - coerced rather than coaxed - but in spite of this managed to fall in love with one of her kidnappers. All very strange...
Peter Judge
Sources: The Oxford English Dictionary on CD-ROM. No Orchids for Miss Blandish by James Hadley Chase (according to one reviewer on the Amazon website, heavily plagiarised from William Faulkner's Sanctuary!) Miss Blandish's cover from <http://libweb.lib.buffalo.edu/kelley/Kelly/KelleyCovers.asp?ID=31>.
It's racing along!
Ed•Ex is the Canberra Society of Editors' biennial training day and the full program is now available on the society's website.
The theme of Ed•Ex 2006 is 'relationships'. There will be sessions on:
Our keynote speaker is Kate Burridge, Professor of Linguistics at Monash University and presenter of a popular ABC program on language issues. The day is not just about listening. There will be two panel discussions, one with ACT publishing houses and the other with designers, indexers and printers on the publishing process.
Join us at the conference lunch with another of our guest speakers, Janet Mackenzie, author of The Editor's Companion and editor of the recent Victorian Society of Editors' publication At the Typeface. Janet will talk about the new national Institute of Professional Editors.
Registration fees for Ed•Ex 2006 are $160 for members and $280 for non-members. Remember, early birds, you get a discount - $150 for members and $250 for non-members - if you register by COB 21 April 2006.
For further information, please contact Kerie Newell on (02) 6121 3470 or <knewell1@optusnet.com.au>.
is published by Canberra Society of Editors,
PO Box 3222, Manuka ACT 2603.
© Canberra Society of Editors 2005. ISSN 1039-3358
- The next newsletter will appear in April 2006 and the copy deadline for this issue is 31 March.
- The editor welcomes contributions by email to <peter.judge@alianet.alia.org.au>, using Word for Windows, for PC or Mac.
- If by snail mail, then please send it on a floppy disk with accompanying hard copy to Peter Judge at:
- 10 Glyde Place, Kambah ACT 2902.
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