Language

Adding Plain Language Services to Your Business

When:  March 19, 2025, 7:00 pm – 8:00 pm PST

Where: Online through Zoom

Cost: Free for Editors Canada members, $10 for non-members, $5 for student non-members

For the past few years, plain language has been gaining momentum. Standards bodies like Editors Canada are publishing guidelines based on a growing mass of evidence about how people read and process information. Readers are increasingly demanding the right to understand the material they need for various purposes. Communicators are seeing the benefits of using plain language to reach their target audiences. And organizations of all kinds are looking for more plain language support.

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Streaming on YouTube! Book Launch for Elements of Indigenous Style, 2nd ed. with Warren Cariou & Lorena Fontaine 

Wednesday, February 12, 2025, at 7:00 pm CST/5 pm PST.

This event, live at McNally Robinson Booksellers in Winnipeg, celebrates the launch of the second edition of Elements of Indigenous Style, an essential guide for culturally appropriate and ethical writing, editing, and publishing involving Indigenous Peoples. The evening will feature two of the second edition’s editors, Warren Cariou and Lorena Fontaine, in conversation as they discuss the creation of the second edition.

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Clarifying Legal Communication: An Editor’s Journey

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Written by Jane Kuang | Copyedited by Dana Sorensen

I was born and raised in a small city where English education was not advanced at that time. My curiosity about the English language and my struggle to break through my language limitations led me to attend the Plain Language and Editing programs at Simon Fraser University. The sense of vulnerability and the disquieting dependence on others for support bothered me for a long time until I learned to face my limits with grace and improve within my capacity. 

Now, as an emerging editor who worked as a paralegal in litigation for a decade, I have witnessed firsthand the communication barriers that arise from differences in language and culture. 

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Copy editors take to the streets?

Yikes! Have stressed-out copy editors turned to violence?

The copy editor’s lot is not an easy one. The work is exacting, even stressful. But is the work so stressful that editors have taken to the streets to settle their differences—over style guides, open compounds, and serial commas—once and for all?

Not yet.

Except, of course, in the strange and wondrous minds of The Onion satirists in the article “4 Copy Editors Killed in Ongoing AP Style, Chicago Manual Gang Violence” (January 7, 2013).

Here’s an excerpt:

“‘At this time we have reason to believe the killings were gang-related and carried out by adherents of both the AP and Chicago styles, part of a vicious, bloody feud to establish control over the grammar and usage guidelines governing American English,’ said FBI spokesman Paul Holstein, showing reporters graffiti tags in which the word ‘anti-social’ had been corrected to read ‘antisocial.’”

Read the complete article.

Photo, “Montreal riot police at play,” by scottmontreal. Licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 2.0 Generic (CC BY-NC 2.0).

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Winter Word Art

If you ever find yourself buried under an avalanche, survival experts advise that you first clear the snow surrounding you then spit into it. Whichever way the saliva goes, up will be in the opposite direction.

Let it Snow! Rosemarie Jarski, 2004.

Photo courtesy of The Hannah Collection.

Bookshelf: More Mini Book Reviews

More three- to five-word book reviews of Christmas gift–worthy books.

A few gift-worthy books. Photo by John Hannah.

A few gift-worthy books. Photo by John Hannah.

Skipping Christmas, John Grisham, 2001.
Seasonal stress. Strategies. Stuff.

Canada’s Stonehenge, Gordon R. Freeman, 2009.
Archaeology. Antiquities. Alberta.

The Annotated Phantom Tollbooth, Norton Juster, illustrated by Jules Feiffer, 2011.
Children’s classic. Collaboration. Commentary.

Merriam-Webster’s Dictionary of English Usage, 1994.
Understandable. Useful. Usable.

The Canadian Press Caps and Spelling, 20th edition, James McCarten, ed., 2012.
Canadianisms. Clear. Concise.

British Columbia: A New Historical Atlas, Derek Hayes, 2012.
Explorers. Engineers. Exhaustive. Entertaining.

The Journals of George M. Dawson: British Columbia, 1875–1878; Volume I, 1875–1876, Douglas Cole and Bradley Lockner, eds., 1989. The Journals of George M. Dawson: British Columbia, 1875–1878; Volume II, 1877–1878, Douglas Cole and Bradley Lockner, eds., 1989.
Geology. Geology. Geology.

Above Stairs: Social Life in Upper-Class Victoria 1843–1918, Valerie Green, 2011.
Aristocracy. Attitudes. Affectations. Artifice. Aegis.

Letters of E.B. White, originally collected and edited by Dorothy Lobrano Guth, revised and updated by Martha White, 2007.
Private. Poetic. Perfect.

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Hark! The Harried Editors Sing! (lyrics)

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It’s time for West Coast Editor’s annual, editing-themed Christmas carol. This year’s panegyric to editors is sung to the tune of “Hark! The Herald Angels Sing!” Lyrics by Cheryl Hannah.

Music transcription by Dee Hannah. The transcription is based on a W.H. Cummings arrangement of Felix Mendelssohn’s “Hark! The Herald Angels Sing!” from Carols for Choirs I: Fifty Christmas Carols, Oxford University Press, London, 1961. Photo by John Hannah.

  1. Hark! The harried editors sing!
    “May the new year much happiness bring!”
    Billings sent and billings paid;
    Coffers filled and money made.
    Joyful wordsmiths, they proclaim,
    “Words are art forms; none the same!”
    At their ink-stained desks they work,
    In the manner of a Dickens clerk.
    Hark! The harried editors sing!
    “May the new year much happiness bring!”

    2.  

  2. Editors, the writers’ friend;
    All their work they soon do mend.
    Long the hours they do toil,
    Longing for the kettle to boil.
    Noble spirits, kindly hearts,
    Champions of the language arts.
    Pleased to do all that they can
    To elevate the heart of man.
    Hark! The harried editors sing!
    “May the new year much happiness bring!”

    3.  

  3. Hail! The editors, sleep deprived!
    Hail! The editors, brows all furrowed!
    Known for the order they do bring
    To just about ev’ry damn thing.
    All their wish lists do include
    A book, a tablet, and some food;
    Longing for the project’s end
    So that their socks they can mend.
    Hark! The harried editors sing!
    “May the new year much happiness bring!”

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OED crowdsourcing redux

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The editors of the Oxford English Dictionary want your help in tracing the history of particular English words and phrases.

What’s old is new again. In 1859, the British Philological Society launched an appeal to the British and American public “to assist in collecting the raw materials for the work, these materials consisting of quotations illustrating the use of English words by all writers of all ages and in all senses, each quotation being made on a uniform plan on a half-sheet of notepaper, that they might in due course be arranged and classified alphabetically and by meanings.” The society’s goal was to create a new dictionary “worthy of the English Language and of the present state of Philological Science.” (The Surgeon of Crowthorne, Simon Winchester, 1998)

The result, after 50 years of toil and tens of thousands of quotation slips? The Oxford English Dictionary.

The philologists and lexicographers are at it again. In October 2012, the OED launched “a major online initiative that involves the public in tracing the history of English words.” This time, however, the public is being asked to submit contributions electronically, to OED appeals, rather than on half-sheets of notepaper.

Currently, the OED is looking for help with tracing the history of the following words:

Watch the video of OED’s appeal for contributions to FAQ.

Video © Oxford English Dictionary.

Photo, “Yellow Umbrella,” by solidether. Licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.0 Generic (CC BY-NC-SA 2.0).

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Bookshelf: Mini Book Reviews

Three- to five-word book reviews of Christmas-gift-worthy books.

Juan de Fuca’s Strait: Voyages in the Waterway of Forgotten Dreams, Barry Gough, 2012.
Mariners. Myths. Mystery.

The First World War: Volume I: To Arms, Hew Strachan, 2001.
Monumental. Might. Mayhem.

Ex Libris: Confessions of a Common Reader, Anne Fadiman, 1998.
Personal. Pleasures. Passions.

Payback: Debt and the Shadow Side of Wealth (CBC Massey Lecture series), Margaret Atwood, 2008.
Timely. Thought-provoking. Treasure trove.

Photo by John Hannah.

An Essay on Typography, Eric Gill, 1936.
Craftsmanship. Common sense. Composition.

Fahrenheit 451, Ray Bradbury, 1951.
Disturbing. Dark. Dystopian.

The Canadian Press Stylebook, 16th Edition, Patti Tasko, ed., 2010.
Policies. Procedures. Packaging. Pointers. Pitfalls.

Lord Peter: A Collection of All the Lord Peter Wimsey Stories, Dorothy L. Sayers, 1972.
Period piece. Peerage. Police. Pursuit. Proof.

The Sisters Brothers, Patrick deWitt, 2011.
Bizarre. Brawls. Bloodshed.

The Keeper of Lost Causes, Jussi Adler-Olsen, 2011.
Denmark. Detection. Department Q.

Bring Up the Bodies, Hilary Mantel, 2012.
Reformation. Rogues. Royals. Retribution. Redux.

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