Danica Swanson
@danicaswanson
I made a "pro writers + editors" starter pack. It's what I wish I'd had when I first joined Farcaster. As a senior editor, I was looking for a cadre of fellow word nerds who might want to get deep into the weeds on things like editorial style guide minutiae, philosophy of editing, critiques of publishing industry business models and norms, writer-editor relationships, book indexing, and so on. This is only the first round. More will be added! I got inspired by @dwr.eth on /gmfarcaster talking about the value of starter packs today, so I decided to just get something out there now to help the word nerds connect. https://warpcast.com/danicaswanson/pack/Pro-Writers-and-0qzx37
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eirrann | he/him
@eirrann.eth
Fun fact: I do research/writing for a living and got started as an editor 20-odd years ago (vague for anon purposes)
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Danica Swanson
@danicaswanson
Great to hear it. Added you to the list!
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eirrann | he/him
@eirrann.eth
Thank you! The more time I spend writing, the less concerned I am about the editorial pedantry that used to keep me up at night, lol It's good to be able to edit my own writing, let alone be trusted by colleagues to improve their research with my editorial eye
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Danica Swanson
@danicaswanson
You make a good point there about the level of trust required for editing. NGL, though, I still love editorial pedantry as much as I ever have. Bring it on. 😄
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eirrann | he/him
@eirrann.eth
I've written multiple corporate style guides, even got a 5 fig bonus for one a decade ago (!) because it impressed the management enough to rate me among the top 5% of performers in the company the year I published it as recognition for the work I put into it Just can't bring myself to care about the stuff I used to get worked up over any more, somehow One of my corporate communication clients has set a new high bar for pedantry, though - and it drives me nuts now (once upon a time I might have found it admirable)
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Danica Swanson
@danicaswanson
A 5-figure bonus? For creating an editorial style guide? That's fantastic. Congrats! Wish rewards like that were more common in the industry. Creating a style guide from scratch is senior-level editorial work, and should be more widely recognized as such. I still love to compare notes with other editors (ideally in friendly, positive-sum, non-competitive ways). But I agree that if the pedantry is taken to extremes, it becomes much less fun. I've created several style guides also. I enjoy the whole process, even the tedious parts. Here's my most recent style guide, developed in 2023 for a small business client that's no longer active. It didn't result in a 5-figure bonus, but parts of it were included verbatim in the Base editorial style guide by @drewcoffman.eth. https://starbased.notion.site/based-Editorial-Style-Guide-v1-3-fcf48ae0639f4b538578862387b2ba0d
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eirrann | he/him
@eirrann.eth
It was a regional office of an international company in an industry flush with cash at the time, so they were paying expats very handsomely The style guide wasn't editorial: most of the 1k+ employees of the regional office weren't native English speakers, and so they had a dept. that was swamped helping to make their letters and contracts more legible, which I helped with the most business critical matters in a senior role So, the style guide was written from the perspective of the non-native English speakers in the office, aiming to help them self-improve their writing enough to reduce the burden on the internal business function Apparently the impact was strong enough to get noticed higher up Sadly, a year or so later, prices for that industry's goods and services tanked (very cyclical industry) and they cut all but a few dozen of the 1k+ staff in that regional office, myself included After that, I returned to the US after more than a decade as an expat Their severance finally made moving home easy
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