Editors know that well-known style guides, such as The Chicago Manual of Style and APA, are revised every several years and a new edition is released.

An editor should, of course, make every effort to obtain the latest edition of every style guide they use. But what to do with the previous edition they were using before?

Should they toss it into the recycling bin? Sell it on eBay? Donate it to a library?

No!

If you are an editor, you should keep the previous edition of your style guides for “the time being” (I’ll explain what that means in a minute). Why?

Some authors or publishers may require that an older edition be used.

I found this out (almost the hard way) last week, when I edited a scientific review that was to be published in a certain journal. When I looked up the journal publisher’s style guide, I found that the publisher required APA 6th edition style.

APA is up to the 7th edition at the time that I type this. I ordered the 7th edition of the APA almost as soon as I heard that it had come out. I had already possessed the 6th edition for a few years…and thank Heaven I still had it, or I would have been in big trouble.

You know what? I almost didn’t have the 6th edition last week.

A year ago, I wondered what the 6th edition could do for me now that I had the 7th edition. So I asked my husband to sell it on eBay.

Less than a week later, I almost took a gig where the 6th edition was required, and I asked my husband to take the listing off eBay, which he promptly did.

Thus, I kept my APA 6th edition…and I am incredibly glad that I did!

I believe that if, for example, you have the 1st edition of a style guide and the 2nd edition comes out, you should obtain the 2nd edition but keep the 1st edition until the 3rd edition is released. Then, and only then, is it safe to get rid of the 1st edition.

Do you believe differently? If so, please comment. I would love to hear your thoughts.

The Thanksgiving holiday is later this week and Christmas comes just a month later. Good grief! Where does all the time go?

Some editors might take holidays off from working. They might tell clients who approach them that they are not available during that time, or advise their long-term clients that they will not be available from this date to that date.

Do I work during the holidays?

Oh yes I do.

However, when possible, I plan my work time around the date of an actual holiday. For example, right now I have a project due on November 30 (the Tuesday after Thanksgiving) which was handed to me on November 19 (the Friday before Thanksgiving). I have planned my work time so that I work on the project during Thanksgiving week on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, and (Black) Friday (I don’t join the shopping frenzy anyway), and then Monday, and put the finishing touches on it on Tuesday before sending it in that day.

Note that Thursday (Thanksgiving Day) is not in the plans. I will be with my family that day and I need that day to be with them. It’s called work-life balance.

Two years ago, I was handed a project shortly after Christmas, and it was due two days before New Year’s Day. I worked on it, including over a weekend, and completed it on time. A lot of people take off the week between Christmas and New Year’s. Not I.

Getting back to the work-life balance issue…Had the project been handed to me before Christmas, I would have planned the work around the holiday (not during it!) as I am doing now.

When I worked in biological labs, I once worked in a lab where the manager had no concept of work-life balance. You were expected to work long hours and basically be married to the lab. If you had a spouse or children, they were to play second violin. Needless to say, this lab had a high turnover rate, and I only lasted five months there. (Thank Heaven I didn’t have to stay longer!)

So tomorrow I begin editing the new project. Bring it on! Just be respectful of my work-life balance, please.

As my birthday is next Sunday, November 14, I will be taking that day off from blogging. This week, I am writing a post about my reflections on this past year.

What did I accomplish, business- and editing-wise, at age 47?

I began by continuing to edit a series of catalogs for the company for which a friend of mine works. This consisted of combing through many PDF pages and listing the required corrections in a Word document. It reminded me how much I need to learn how to edit PDFs directly (hello, Denise Cowle? I want to take your class on this.). However, I got to look at a lot of beautiful pictures of the company’s furniture in gorgeous settings, which was fun. The catalogs were finished in mid-December.

At the time, the church which I attend had just begun meeting in person again, but many attenders (my husband and me included) still opted to watch church online out of fear of COVID. The pastor was also wary of the disease, so he delivered his messages on video which was projected to the big screens in the church auditorium. That was where I came in. The captions and Bible verses and such that came on the video at specific times were checked and edited…by yours truly. The pastor returned in person on Easter Sunday (April 4) and that task vanished.

But…then the church began producing programs again, complete with Scripture outlines, so there was still work to be done. (Yay!) (I’m not being sarcastic here.) There were also Bible study materials to edit.

Alas, in late December, I learned a painful lesson, as my business suffered a blow due to a grave mistake I made. A sincere apology was made and the matter was buried, but it really put a damper on the holiday season. Also, in January, I did work for a researcher who then said he could not afford my fee, and I ended up giving him a huge discount, which did not feel good on my part.

However, in general, 2021 started with a cheerful bang. I began an assignment to edit the entire website of my friend’s company–a project which took me until the end of August (eight months!) and netted me a nice sum of money, which was paid monthly. Between pages of furniture, I managed to edit a scientific manuscript in March (and I would love to do more) and keep going with the church materials.

As for my pro bono work on the website of a local nonprofit, I handed the reins to a colleague from one of my organizations who was looking for pro bono work for herself. That felt good, as I was not leaving the organization high and dry.

I turned a profit in 2020 (Yay!) and will probably do so again in 2021 (Double yay!).

Age 47 was a difficult year for me personally, so I am ready to jump into 48, hoping the year will be kind.

 

Ten days ago, I took the plunge and changed my business email address.

Why would I do such a thing, you may ask?

When I started my business three years ago, I knew that I would need an email address for it that was separate from my personal email address. At that time, I mistakenly believed that I was a proofreader, and so I made up an email address almost on the spot which contained a reference to proofreading. (Sorry, but I am keeping the actual address to myself, out of respect for my own privacy.)

Alas…I soon realized that what I did for my new career was not proofreading, but copyediting.

In one class I took a year and a half ago, our teacher suggested that I get a new email address–one that more accurately reflected what I do. Otherwise, she said, potential clients (and other people) might think I am a proofreader who knows nothing about copyediting.

“The teacher is definitely right,” I thought, “but changing an email address once everyone knows it is such a pain in the rear end! I’ll never be able to do it. Woe is me!”

I finally stopped whining ten days ago and changed the address. I made up one that references copyediting instead of proofreading and made it active.

But then came the hard part–letting all of my contacts know about my new email address and asking them to use it from now on.

Thank Heaven that I keep an Excel spreadsheet of my past and present clients’ names, affiliations, and email addresses. I used the spreadsheet to make a list of client email addresses, plus addresses of other important contacts. Then, I composed my email:

“Good afternoon. This is to inform you that my email address has changed. The new email is […]. Please make a note of it. Thank you very much.”

The last step was typing each email address into the “To” field from scratch. Yes, this was a drag, but very necessary.

My email address is much more accurate now, and I love it. My old one is still active in order to “catch” folks I may have missed (and whom I will notify of the change very soon).

Have you ever changed your email address? How easy or difficult did you find the process?

This past week, work-wise, has been “the calm before the storm.” What do I mean by that, exactly?

I mean that next week, a bunch of work is going to be handed to me at once. I will be editing the first of three catalogs for a retail company and editing a church website which is being redone. My goodness–I will have to tell other potential clients that I am booked! (That’s a good problem to have.)

This past week, however, I was in a dry spell. I had finished a client portfolio for the retail company the previous week, plus a little bit of work for the church (a program and a supplement). So, in my dry spell, all I had to was edit this week’s program and supplement, plus a first-time guest card, all for the church.

What to do with all of my downtime?

For starters, I made two bank runs this past week–one for my business and the other for a personal reason. Thankfully, I was able to conduct my affairs both times from the drive-thru.

I also caught up on correspondence with two colleagues from one of my professional organizations. They both emailed me back quickly. Once you make connections, it is very important to keep them. Speaking of that organization, I found three names of new members who live in or near my state and looked up their profiles to try to contact them. I often do this with new members to welcome them and network with them. Sadly, I was out of luck this month, as none of these members had their email address on their profiles. This is understandable for security reasons, however.

I had a few Zoom meetings. I did some cleaning.

I voted in our city’s elections for mayor and aldermen (that is, I filled out the ballot at home and took it to an official drop box).

And finally…(drum roll) I changed my business email address to one which more accurately represents the specific kind of editing I do. And then came the task of changing the address with all of my organizations and social media sites, emailing my clients, and such. It’s a pain in the rear end, but it will be worth it.

Here comes the new week. Bring it on!

Roughly two weeks ago, I was leaving my home to go to church when, upon opening my front door, I saw a package. It was a box addressed to me. Funny, I thought. I didn’t order anything lately from eBay or any retail site. Since I did not want to be late for the church service, I put the box aside before I left.

Hours later, I checked who had sent me the box. It turned out to be my bank.

Hmmm, I thought. I know I recently changed my business name and opened a new checking account, but why would they have sent me a box? When I opened the old account under my old name three years ago, I was not sent a box (although this was at a different branch of my bank). With some trepidation, I opened the box.

Inside were gifts: a disbursement journal, a binder containing checks, and a stamp. I knew what the checks were for, of course, but…Whaa?

I figured there had to be some kind of mistake. When I first started my business with its old name, all I got was checks in a checkbook with a register in it. That was all I needed, right?

I absolutely had to clear this up. I put the items back in the box and drove to the bank, where I showed them to an employee and said, “There must be a mistake. I don’t think I’m supposed to have all of these things.”

The employee, a young woman, explained to me what each item was and what it was for. The disbursement journal was to be used like a check register–to keep track of deposits and debits. The stamp was for endorsing checks that I received (i.e. from clients). And the checks in the binder were real and if I wanted checks in a checkbook, it would cost [insert outrageous amount here]. The whole value of the items in the box was over $100, so I should keep them.

I thanked her for her help, decided to keep everything in the box, and apologized to her. I should not have apologized, because what was I apologizing for? Being stupid? Although the young woman was incredibly nice and patient with me, she probably thought I was just that. At least, that is what I suspected, being paranoid as I am. (I have an MS in biochemistry, by the way, so stupid I am not.)

I’ve begun to use these items, and I feel like I am an “official” business. It makes me feel very professional.

Dear reader, if you own a business, what items to you use in the bookkeeping of your business? I would love to know and get some ideas.

Last week, I talked about the obstacles that I encountered when I changed the name of my editing business. One such obstacle involved dealing with my bank.

In this post, my bank shall remain nameless in order to protect it. However, I am fairly certain that what you are about to read at least seems to apply to most, if not all, megabanks in the United States. (I cannot speak about “small-town” banks, as I do not deal with any. Perhaps you deal with one; if you do, I would love to hear about your experience with them in the comments to this post.)

When I first set up my business three years ago (under its old name), I set up a business bank account. I did so at the branch of my bank (Branch A) that is close to the condo building in which I live. The people there were very nice and helpful and patient (patience is essential when dealing with a new business owner who is still learning the ropes). So I was off and running.

The only problem with Branch A is that it was located (and still is located) right at a very dangerous intersection in my city. I’ll spare you the details of the intersection, but I will say that the manager of Branch A once remarked that she had witnessed several accidents that took place there. I personally have had more than one close call at this location as well. So after a number of years, I became fed up and said to myself that I could not do business at a bank where I had to practically risk my life to travel to and from there.

I then found myself at Branch B of my bank, the next closest branch to my home–some distance away but can still be driven to in ten minutes or so. Branch B is less attractive and less professional-looking than Branch A. When I realized that this was the bank at which I was going to do business, I sighed, but kept thinking about the death trap intersection next to the former, nicer branch.

Branch B is the bank where I closed my business bank account that was in my old name and moved all of the money to a new account that was created with my new name. The process took months (I believe I wrote about this in my last post) and I dealt with a mixture of people. One woman, a teller, whom I remember was particularly unpleasant–not nasty per se, but not nice or professional at all, in my opinion. The manager of Branch B was definitely the most helpful of their staff. She had a strong personality, which always intimidates me, but she definitely knew what she was doing and thanks to her, now I have a new banking account in my new business name.

Fellow editors, how have your dealings with your banks been?

What’s in a business name, more precisely?

I recently changed the name of my editing business and the change took effect in late September. My original name was “Suzelle Fiedler, Proofreader LLC.” I changed it to “Fiedler Editorial LLC.”

The latter, I believe, sounds much more professional than the former. The former name was one which I pretty much made up on the spot one evening after realizing that my business needed a name. (Duh.) It turned out that, at the time, I had confused copyediting (what I do) with proofreading (something many people think I do). I wish to emphasize that this happened three years ago, and both I and my business have grown by leaps and bounds since.

As I said earlier in this post, the name change took effect in late September. Would you believe that I first put the wheels in motion to change my name back in late July? I had to pay a sizeable amount of money, make phone calls, get my Articles of Amendment from the state where I live, and then wait until my state recognizes the new name (eight weeks–and I did not know it would take that long).

After that, I had to close the bank account of my formerly named business and open a new account under the new name of my business. This was terribly hard. It involved several trips to the local bank and dealings with some people who were not nice, to say the least. Last week, the new account was finally established. Yippee!

However, today I got a package at my door from the bank. It contained things which I had never gotten when I opened the first account with the old name. I had only asked for checks. Instead, I got things that I don’t even know how to name, much less use. And so tomorrow I must haul myself to the bank again, this time with the box, and ask what went wrong.

After all of this, do I regret changing the name of my business?

Absolutely not!

The new name is much better than the old, and I am very glad that I have it now.

Have you ever changed your business name? How easy or hard was it for you?

As most of you know, my editing specialties are in the biological and biochemical sciences. I have, after all, an MS in biochemistry.

However, in my time as a freelance editor, I have learned to branch out, or “diversify,” to be more refined. I believe that this must be done in order to succeed as an editor. It’s just common sense.

For example, I edit materials for my church. Now, none of them have anything to do with the sciences. However, quite a bit of fact-checking can be involved in the form of looking up Bible verses in different translations of the Bible. There is an absolutely wonderful website, BibleGateway.com, which one can search to find just about any Scripture verse in any Bible translation. Since the programs at my church contain Bible verses, I could not do my job without this website.

Another way in which I have diversified is in my editing of the website and catalogs of an outdoor furniture company, Country Casual Teak, which sells very beautiful teak outdoor furniture. My job here requires more of a sharp eye than anything else, since I have to compare prices on a PDF with prices on a master spreadsheet, for example, or make sure that a product’s dimensions are correct and consistent. Although such work can be tedious at times, I enjoy it, largely because I get to see so many beautiful photos as a fringe benefit.

This past week, I was assigned a scientific paper to edit which was in a field that was very different to me: economics and logistics. I surprised myself by being able to understand the terms used and the logic behind the conclusions. I found myself having impostor syndrome while I was working on this paper, and I still have it now, because I do not yet know whether the authors approve of my work. If things go well, however, I will definitely be able to claim a huge victory.

How about you? How do you diversify?

Please allow me to write today about limiting my intake.

Intake of what? Food? Caffeine? Alcohol?

No, no, and no. I’m talking about TV news.

I have recently renewed my effort to limit my exposure to TV news. It is not uplifting or encouraging at all, because, let’s face it–bad news sells. (I remember years ago hearing a story about a newspaper that was created to report only good news, and that it did–and went bust less than a year after its founding.) And in the TV industry, as everywhere, it’s all about the money, right?

I now actively turn on the news only for the local weather forecast. Oftentimes, I have to suffer through local news stories while waiting for the forecast. However, the local news isn’t as bad as the national news, which is horribly sensationalistic in my opinion. ABC, NBC, and CBS want to hold the viewer’s attention, so they spread colorful graphics on the TV screen and have their anchors and reporters talk loudly and dramatically. Before now, I watched the national news’s reports about COVID and how it’s getting really bad again and how the vaccine’s effectiveness is waning, et cetera, and felt my face grow longer as the broadcast went on.

My one cousin once stated that the local news is actually more depressing than the national news. “First story–a murder. Second story–a murder. Third story–a stabbing. And so on.” (At the time, my cousin and I were both living in the Washington, DC area, so your local news may vary.) I respectfully disagreed, however. The local news is not nearly as discouraging as the national news.

For those of you who regularly watch Bad Morning America (Good Morning America) or The Blah Show (The Today Show): Have you ever noticed how at the end of every story, an anchor always says something like, “Such a tragic story. Thank you, Bruce,” or “Absolutely heartbreaking. Thanks, Jennifer.” They never say anything positive. That’s because there never is anything positive on those shows. Or so it seems.

Do you agree?