It was a total thrill to go to the annual conference of the English editors’ association, the SfEP (Society for Editors and Proofreaders), in Lancaster in early September. I attend the Editors Canada conference every year, but this was my first editing conference in the UK, and it was great!
First impression: how courteous and welcoming people were. I took the bus a few times from Lancaster’s town centre to the university and back, and everyone getting off the bus thanked the driver, every single time.
The conference atmosphere was just as friendly. At breakfast and tea breaks, instead of standing around a hotel lobby in little clusters, people just sat at tables with whoever was already there: you talked to the people around you. It made it easy for newcomers to fit in.
The gala dinner had assigned seating: I don’t know who did the assigning, but it was another exercise in enforced networking. And by that I mean that I was forced to meet a bunch of friendly, smart people who edit in fields similar to or quite different from mine: it was a pleasure. These connections are so important: you learn that Caroline specializes in science, Heidi edits cancer research, Louise does indie fiction, Sue does memoir and so on. So when I receive inquiries about work that’s too specialized for me, I can refer the client to someone who is knowledgeable in the field, and if I feel comfortable taking the work on myself, I know whom to ask if I have a question.
The pub quiz night was more challenging than I’d expected. The first question was an obscure reference to Rabelais, and I thought, OK … The second question involved an allusion to Voltaire (I got that one!) , and we moved on through British politics to pop songs. These editors have quite a breadth of knowledge!
As far as the sessions go, well, in my experience, all editing conferences have interesting sessions. Here are a few highlights.
Linguist Lynne Murphy of the University of Sussex explored the differences between North American and British approaches to editing, outlining some of the key cultural, educational and historical differences that contribute to varying understandings of what editors should be doing. (Super-short version: Americans assume anyone can learn the rules and apply them – the aim is to produce reader-friendly text; the Brits are less concerned with rules and more inclined to rely on a good ear for language – the idea is to support the author’s style.) This was an important perspective for those of us whose client base is international, and it clarified thoughts that had been floating around amorphously in the back of my head for some time. Murphy’s most recent book is The Prodigal Tongue: The Love-Hate Relationship between British & American English.
Because an editing business involves business as well as editing, many popular sessions focussed on how to run an editing business properly, from figuring out what needs to be in the budget to content marketing to tracking hours and creating spreadsheets that crunch numbers (of hours, dollars or pounds, words, pages, etc.). Several of these sessions, by Erin Brenner, Louise Harnby, and Alison Hughes, left participants with plenty to think about in terms of making the business side of things run more efficiently and freeing up time to do the things we excel at (rather than those we, ahem, Excel at). And the folks from Editing Globally explained the logistics of working as an international collective.
Swearing. This was a serious (well, not entirely) presentation: at a time when official figures regularly say and tweet words many consider offensive, how do newspapers (and others) comment on the content of the statements? Do you print the whole offensive word or use asterisks, hyphens or dashes to replace missing letters? How many of the letters should be replaced? Can multiple asterisks cause misunderstandings? Kia Thomas led us thoughtfully through a minefield of imaginative cursing, addressing the serious underlying issues. (I won’t tell you about the fun game at the end.)
And Sarah Grey’s discussion of inclusive language and how not to alienate groups of people by accidentally (or not) leaving them out of the discussion was articulate and considered. Are editors just a bunch of politically correct sticklers? We’re not the sticklers, she argued. The sticklers are amateurs; we are professionals keeping on top of language change.
So there was plenty of learning and plenty of connecting – it was a full-on few days – and after that I was ready to escape. Which I did. I’d booked myself three nights at a tiny converted garden shed on the outskirts of Giggleswick, on the edge of the Yorkshire Dales. I had never visited the Dales, but I’d heard a lot about the area and wanted to see what it was like. It was fantastic. The shed had a bed that was more comfortable than ours at home, only I don’t usually have to climb a ladder at night (or use a composting toilet). There were rolling hills and dry stone walls; there was a cow in the field on the other side of the wall with the espaliered apples; there was an ordinance survey map showing shorter walks, longer walks, guided walks, walks with caves, more walks than I could undertake in my short stay. I want to go back and stay in the (ten-bedroom) big house with friends and spend more time walking through the fields. The sheep looked so calm. So un-stressed. When I’ve finished being an editor, I’d like to be a sheep.
But before I fulfill that woolly career goal, there’s plenty to do. After an action-packed three days of conversation, presentation and collaboration, I’m ready to make some checklists, streamline processes, work more efficiently, plan more strategically and get back to work!
near Giggleswick, Yorkshire