A Discussion with Elle Sandy About the Business of Proofreading

Elle, looking at the stars with our mutual grandparents, 1956.

Elle Sandy is a professional proofreader/editor. We first met in Maine when I was one year old. She is my cousin and there is a great photo I have cherished all my life of my grandparents' four firstborns (all born in 1951-52). My second favorite memory of Elle was frog hunting in Boston when we were eight years old. After circuitous careers, we re-connected through social media. She's an avid reader with keen powers of attention to detail, well-suited to a late life career as a pro proofreader. 

In this era of deteriorating standards regarding the rules of grammar and usage, I thought it would be helpful to let other writers know Elle is a superb editor and proofreader who still has room in her schedule for new clients. Whether sending a manuscript to a publisher for consideration or self-publishing a book or major document, you really want to put your best foot forward. Elle Sandy can help you.  

EN: You've always been an avid reader. Who or what were your biggest influences in this regard?

Elle Sandy: The joke about me has always been that I'm the sort of person that will read the ketchup bottle on the table if there is nothing else available. My earliest reading memories of any consequence were reading both the Hardy boys and Nancy Drew mysteries under the tree between our house and the one next door with the boy next door. I brought the Nancy Drew books, he brought the Hardy Boys. That lasted until I discovered my father's collection of science fiction, mostly Ace Double Books. These were books which had two short novels in each volume, printed upside down from each other. Mysteries were good, but science fiction ignited my imagination! I've also always loved fantasy. Alice in Wonderland was a long-standing favorite of mine. I had an illustrated volume with both Alice stories in it which I loved because it was annotated, giving the background for all the British "in" jokes, such as the Cheshire Cat and why the Hatter was Mad. I guess you'd say the authors who first formed my love of reading were Caroline Keene and Lewis Carroll. 

EN: Are you affiliated with a group of proofreaders?

ES: Yes, there are some Facebook groups, private ones, that are proofreading groups I became associated with as a student of proofreading. However, there is also a group I have recently become a member of, the National Association of Independent Writers and Editors, NAIWE.  I'm still getting my footing there. The place where I have decided to "put up my shingle," so to speak, is Fiverr, a freelancer's shop. I have a gig listed there as a medical proofreader, since I also have earned a Certificate in Medical Transcription. Fiverr requires that some freelancers, like me, prove their proficiency so clients can be sure their freelance hires know what they are doing.

EN: I agree with you that there is a lot of bad spelling and grammar on social media. What's especially atrocious is how many self-published books have been produced seemingly without being proofed at all. Care to comment on this?

ES: My fellow proofreading graduates and I have been known to bemoan the apparent blatant disregard many authors have for the printed word that they rely on to communicate. It is painful at times to read a newspaper, magazine, or book that desperately needs proofreading. Most could use a good editor as well. Sentence fragments are often orphaned. Other sentences are page long run-on sentences. Granted, there are some great writers who use excessively long sentences, but that is not something everyone can pull off well. I know that good editing and proofreading can be a bit costly, but by scrimping on these services, most writers are being penny wise and pound foolish. Readers will only buy bad authors once or twice before they have had enough, and guessing at the meaning of a sentence with incorrect punctuation and spelling can be very confusing.

EN: Do you have any specific kinds of clients that you are seeking to work for?

ES: As I mentioned, I have earned a certificate in Medical Transcription, so I am particularly interested in medical proofreading. However, I will proofread just about anything, with the exception of biographies and technical material which have a tendency to put me to sleep! I do charge a bit more for medical proofreading, because it is exacting and requires specialized knowledge. But I enjoy ferreting out and correcting errors. It's almost like a puzzle that requires special knowledge and attention to detail. I worked on the Gutenberg Project for a while, and still go back now and again, even though it is largely volunteer, because I find it challenging. 

EN: There are a number of different style manuals. Which are the most popular today and why?

ES: First, let's define what a style manual is. A style manual (or guide, or sheet) is a set of rules for writing. The standard has changed over the years, because the language has changed and even technology has impacted the rules we write by. You would choose a particular style sheet because the industry standard is different for the different purposes of writing. For a scholarly or academic writing, you would probably want to use the APA (American Psychological Association) guide, but for a newspaper article, you would want to follow the AP (Associated Press) style guide. While you can choose any style sheet you want to follow, it's usually best to choose the sheet that your prospective publisher follows. The one I usually use is CMOS (Chicago Manual of Style) because most book publishers follow it. However, if I'm proofreading for medical journals or a thesis, I'll use the APA guide. The differences aren't huge, but can be confusing to someone who doesn't know the difference.

EN: What are you doing to promote your services?

ES: Aside from doing interviews like this, you mean? Currently, I'm mostly networking and gaining a reputation, I hope, through some volunteer work, like the Gutenberg Project. I do occasionally speak to people I run into who have web pages, and offer to look them over. My services are listed with several social media sites, like LinkedIn, and I'm offering my services through freelancer's sites, like Fiverr. I hope these efforts will bear fruit. For all your readers who are writers, remember, it is very easy to overlook your own errors, and then you have to bare - excuse me, that should be bear - the consequences! 

EN: How long have you been a paid proofreader and how did you get into this line of work?

ES: As with many of my fellow proofreaders, I have felt bothered by the lack of good writing in social media. Mostly, we try to just ignore the people who say "we went over to there house" or "I wanted 2 go 2", but find that we have a desire to make the world more readable. I don't think that many of my fellow students thought they had many things wrong in the areas of grammar, punctuation, spelling, and word choice. 

That is before we got involved in a class in proofreading. 

My particular downfall was commas. I came to think of them as little wild animals, and I was definitely not alone in that! However, with persistence and a perfectionist streak, I have learned how to place them correctly. I have a love of reading and the printed word, and have always felt that proper use of the English language minimized the number of misunderstandings and helped to further civilized debate. So, when my husband died last year, I looked around for something to do with writing. I found a course which I was sure I could complete by the end of the pandemic, and sure enough, last December I earned a Certificate in Proofreading. At the age of 69, I had a new career.

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To contact Elle Sandy, visit her page on Fiverr.
https://www.fiverr.com/s2/babf26d47d

Though she specializes in proofreading medical documents, you ma contact her for other kinds of proofreading projects. If she is unable to take an assignment, she's part of an association that has reliable, capable help for your proofing needs.

Writing Insights from Senior Editor David Brown of Darling Axe

David G. Brown

When I was first starting out as a writer in the early 80s, we didn't have email so that all query letters to editors were sent through the mail. (To the uninitiated, a query letter is how writers would pitch an article idea to a publication, or book idea to a publisher.) The first replies that I received were all form letters. I began to wonder if editors were even human, until one day an editor wrote a handwritten note on one of my rejection letters. "You're getting close."

As it turns out, editors are more than gatekeepers. Running a magazine or getting a newspaper assembled and out the door is only one kind of editorial role. In the writing field, many editors work much the same way bridal gown and tuxedo shops do, except that instead of helping you look your best on your wedding day, they work to make your prose look its best before it gets strutted out on the bigger stage.

This past year I began blogging on Medium,  a relatively new blogging platform started by Ev Williams, co-founder of both Blogger and Twitter. It's become a fairly good-sized community of writers and readers, and massive quantities of good content. I've noted a number of editors write on Medium, one of these being David Brown of the editing team Darling Axe.

David is an award-winning short fiction writer with two debut novels represented by the Donaghy Literary Group. He's published poetry, fiction, and nonfiction in magazines and literary journals, and he volunteers for the Malahat Review where he interviews writing judges and screens contest entries. He holds a BA in anthropology (UVic) and an MFA in creative writing (UBC). As a senior editor at DarlingAxe.com, he pays special attention to structure, relationship arcs, and voice.

EN: What are the primary reasons people hire an editor?

David Brown: Our most popular service is developmental editing, which is a thorough structural critique with scene-by-scene feedback. I would say this is also the most important service in terms of crafting an immersive and engaging narrative, whether for indie authors or authors seeking traditional publishing. In other words, it doesn’t matter how polished a novel’s prose if the story isn’t structurally sound.

Our second most popular service is line editing. This is much more than proofreading for errors. A line edit is a prose overhaul, with special attention to grammar, style, clarity, repetition, and word choice. This might involve reordering paragraphs and rewriting sentences, as well as trimming and cutting as required. This service is particularly important for self-publishing authors, as they do not have the support of an agent and publisher team.

Other than that, clients come to us for proofreading, query letter support, and hook assessments.

EN: What was your path from writer to editing for pay?

DB: I’ve always done a bit of both. One of my first jobs out of high school was as a copy editor for a university newspaper. A few years later I started freelance editing, everything from undergraduate essays to magazine articles and graduate theses. Meanwhile, I wrote a lot of poetry and short fiction, often publishing zines with friends, and occasionally getting legitimately published. Once I had enough of a portfolio, I applied for the MFA program in creative writing at UBC, and I was very excited to be accepted. Graduates from this program account for ten percent of all novels published in Canada. That’s where I gained a solid basis in writing and workshopping fiction—everything from short stories to novels to screenplays. From that point, it was a natural transition into editing fiction full time.

EN: I assume editing includes books, data sheets, articles. Can you enumerate and elaborate?

DB: At DarlingAxe.com, we focus primarily on novels, though we do also take on occasional short fiction projects, plays, screenplays, picture books, and even poetry. I also still have a few academic clients from my years freelancing, so I also work on some nonfiction projects.

EN: What’s the most interesting or unusual project you’ve worked on?

DB: That’s a very difficult question! I have had so many interesting projects this year. One of my favorites, though, was Dead by Sunrise by Richard Ryker. I love a good murder mystery, and Ryker has done an excellent job with this new release. The story is set in Forks, Washington, which is the same setting as Twilight, and he teases that connection in a way that adds a bit of humor into an otherwise suspenseful detective story.

EN: With the advent of self-publishing there’s been a massive quantity of badly edited books produced. Care to comment on this?

DB: Writing a full-length manuscript is a huge accomplishment, and I really can’t fault writers who are excited to get their creation in front of readers. However, it’s easy to love your own work too much, and thereby not see that revisions are still required to move from a draft to a masterpiece. It’s true that writers are very often hasty and rush into self-publishing before their manuscript is ready. In many of these cases, their book doesn’t do well as a result. There are, however, many amazing indie writers out there who know what they are doing, and who hire a professional to help make sure their manuscript is the best it can be before setting it loose on the world.

EN: That's good advice, especially since you only have one chance to make a first impression. What is your sales pitch or elevator speech to writers who need an editor?

DB: At DarlingAxe.com, we are professional editors as well as award-winning writers. We understand the intense effort and emotional investment you have poured into your work. It's our job to help you realize your vision and take your manuscript to the next level.

EN: A few quick responses here if you don't mind. How long should a blog post be?

DB: That depends on the topic, but this is the internet we’re talking about, so short and sweet is best. Ideally, blog posts are very specific so as to best answer a search query. For many writing topics, 500-1000 words seems to be a good target.

EN: Who has been your biggest influence?

DB: Ursula Le Guin and Raymond Chandler. I love that they both write exciting “genre” fiction with a literary voice.

EN: What have you been reading this year for personal enjoyment or enrichment?

DB: Best book I’ve read this year: Too Like the Lightning by Ada Palmer (The Terra Ignota series). Very excited for book four to come out next February!

EN: Where did the name Darling Axe come from?

DB: The Darling Axe comes from a bit of universal writing advice: kill your darlings. This is a reference to sentences, characters, or entire sections of a manuscript that are dear to a writer, but that are not actually serving the story. The narrative must come first! You sometimes need to let go, kill your darlings, and get tough with yourself for the next revision. Our axe is well honed, so we’re happy to assist authors who need a bit of guidance in setting their darlings free.

EN: Ah! Got it. Thanks for all the good advice.


Related Links
DarlingAxe.com
https://medium.com/