Tag: editing

copy-editing, diversity, editing, inclusivity, publishing, writing

Better with an editor than sorry: some reflections on the Kate Clanchy case

Andrea Hajek

One of my favourite morning activities is to listen to the BBC News on the radio while preparing my breakfast. On one of these occasions, I heard an advertisement for a BBC podcast called Anatomy of a Cancellation, about the controversy around Kate Clanchy. The story intrigued me, especially the role of the publisher.

All the commotion was about Some Kids I Taught and What They Taught Me, a memoir in which the author – an award-winning writer and teacher – provides ‘[a] teacher’s honest, personal account of state education’, as described in a Guardian review in 2019, a few years before the controversy erupted on Twitter. Initially praised and awarded the prestigious Orwell prize, the book was later accused of using racist descriptions of children.

For me, the complete change in attitude towards the book and its author is one of the most interesting aspects of this case. The podcast outlines the sequence of events, allowing Clanchy’s critics to explain their positions and the author to respond. It also explores how the entire affair negatively impacted everyone involved. In doing so, it raises questions about publishing ethics, the dangers of social media and, most importantly, the importance of good, balanced editing!

In fact, I would have liked to hear more about the editing process, but the publisher refused to take part in the podcast. Episode 5 does feature an interview with a sensitivity reader (someone who reads a book to spot offensive content, stereotypes and bias), hired to review an edited version of the memoir. I was really struck by what she said about the emotional impact of words and the author–reader relationship. While I can see why some people are concerned that a sensitivity reader’s involvement could restrict an author’s freedom of speech, I agree that we are responsible for what we write and should always consider the potential hurt that words can cause.

In my opinion, it is one of the editor’s tasks to ensure that language does not reinforce stereotypes, for example by avoiding descriptors that refer to personal attributes such as race, gender, sexual orientation, disability or age (as set out in these Inclusive Language Guidelines). Unless they are relevant and valid. But determining this is apparently not that straightforward!

copy-editing, editing, proofreading, writing

The emotions of editing

Andrea Hajek
Intuitive Editing: Adam Moss on the Importance of Trusting Our Reactions

‘[G]ood editors are technically proficient: they’re highly knowledgeable and able to follow the appropriate rules and guidelines. However, truly excellent editors also follow their instincts. They rely on them as much as they rely on The Chicago Manual of Style and their dictionary of choice. Editing, then, is not just an intellectual exercise but an emotional one too.’

academic publishing, academic writing, AI, copy-editing, proofreading, publishing, translating, writing

What do communists and shareholders have in common? Just my two cents on AI

Andrea Hajek


I was recently talking to an outsider about my work as a freelance editor and translator, and AI inevitably came up. Was I worried about losing jobs because of AI? It’s a fair question, one that occasionally – and unsurprisingly – pops up in a discussion list for editors to which I subscribe. To be honest, I’m not. As Grammar Girl writes in her newsletter about AI and its impact on people like me, ‘[f]or a lot of clients, AI may not be the cheapest or most efficient way to get the writing or editing they need’. I did an editing job earlier this year that perfectly illustrates the damage AI can do, and I thought I should share it with you.

The text was a historical article about World War II, with frequent references to the anti-fascist resistance movement that fought between 1943 and 1945 to liberate Italy from Nazis and fascists alike. It was an extremely heterogeneous movement, made up of resistance fighters coming from three main groups: the Communist Party, the liberal-socialist Action Party and Christian Democracy. There were also socialist partisans and members of the moderately conservative Liberal Party. However, my author revealed the presence of an additional group that other historians must have overlooked: shareholders. Shareholders? Um, maybe just some people worried about losing their shares because of the war…?

I suspected from the start that this was an AI-generated translation from Italian, not least because the author sent me the original Italian article along with the English version (which we had not agreed). At first glance, the text looked fine and didn’t contain the usual mistakes made by native Italian speakers, but it did sound very Italian, so it was clearly a literal translation. Occasionally, punctuation was lacking and the syntax was messed up as a result. The translation was also inconsistent: for example, the name of an Italian newspaper was sometimes translated, sometimes left in Italian. It dawned on me that this could very well be a machine translation.

My suspicions were confirmed when I came across the famous ‘shareholders’, mentioned alongside some of the other groups involved in the resistance. I checked the original and there it said ‘azionisti’, members of the Partito d’Azione – the Action Party. OMG. The software translated ‘azionisti’ literally, completely ignoring the context and despite the party name being mentioned earlier in the article, but clearly AI doesn’t remember that far back. Not so intelligent after all, eh?

Now I understand why people might need to use translation software. Academic publishing can be a real money pit, so you think the software will save you money, but it won’t if the result is inconsistent at best, ridiculous at worst. Without a human editor who knows what they’re reading, someone who may even have studied Italian history, you risk embarrassing yourself in front of your colleagues.

But if you must rely on translation software, here are two tips: (1) have a human being post-edit the translation; (2) tell them that you used translation software. Copy editors always figure out the truth. ALWAYS.