Editors BC General Meeting—Holiday Social Edition

WHENDecember 17, 2025, 7:00 pm–8:00 pm PST
WHEREOnline through Zoom
COSTFree for Editors BC members

Join us for an Editors BC holiday social for a fun evening of discussion and connection! It’s a chance to unwind, swap stories from the editing trenches, and celebrate the season together.

Participate in a couple of quick polls designed to spark conversation about our work, our quirks, and what we’re looking forward to in 2026. Feel free to wear your coziest holiday sweater, bring your favourite beverage, and settle in for an hour of easy conversation with fellow editors.

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Greeting card illustration with diverse groups of people holding each other.

DRIVE-BY EDITING: punctuation & capitalization

Cheryl Hannah noticed this sign while waiting to be seated at a Vancouver Island restaurant. She was puzzled why the copywriter chose to insert a full stop after “We will be Pleased to seat you” but omitted one after “Welcome.” She was also puzzled why the copywriter chose to capitalize “Pleased.”

Family members, accustomed to her editorial obsessions, formed a ring around her so that she could take the photo without causing a scene.

Photo by Cheryl Hannah.

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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NORAD tracks Santa

NORAD keeps close watch on Santa as he nears Canadian airspace.

Want to know when Santa enters Canadian airspace on Christmas Eve? So does NORAD.

In the 2012 Canadian NORAD Region holiday video, Major General Pierre St-Amand explains that “trackers in the Canadian air-defence sector … [will] closely monitor their radar systems to make sure Santa and his reindeer are not delayed on their way into your home on Christmas Eve.”

Official NORAD Santa Tracker.

When Santa and his reindeer near eastern Canada, NORAD will scramble two Canadian fighter jets to escort Santa into Canadian airspace; the fighter jets will accompany Santa across Canada as he makes his deliveries and then escort him to the border to ensure that he leaves.

Merry Christmas!

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HW-ECciloF0&w=560&h=315]

© Canadian NORAD Region.