President’s report
By Deborah Shaw AE
I’m an editor, so I’m all about arming myself with resources and information. I think about that Donald Rumsfeld quote from 2002 far too often, the one about known unknowns and unknown unknowns: “We also know there are known unknowns; that is to say we know there are some things we do not know. But there are also unknown unknowns – the ones we don’t know we don’t know.”
The unknown unknowns keep me awake at night. What might I have missed in that last edit? What don’t I know that I absolutely should? The best I can do is to keep reading, keep listening, keep learning and keep looking out for reliable resources.
Knowing where to look for good information is half of the editor’s battle, especially as websites publish more AI-generated articles and Google integrates more generative AI into its results.
Unlike Australia and its many established style guides, New Zealand doesn’t really have style guides with the same standing. Fit to print remains a staple for many, but an informal poll of our members in our Facebook group showed the breadth of style guides we use: New Hart’s rules, Chicago manual of style, Associated Press, APA 7 (American Psychological Association), AMA (American Medical Association).
In this month’s issue of Gatherings, we’ve collected a guide to Aotearoa editing resources. Links to these are also in the member section of the IPEd website. Here are some of my favourites from that list, as well as a few extras that help me work through those known unknowns.
An authoritative dictionary like Oxford, Merriam-Webster or Macquarie gives me the authority to back up my choices. Another essential dictionary for New Zealand-based editors is Te Aka Māori dictionary.
I point my clients towards the Guidelines for Māori language orthography and encourage them to keep a copy on hand.
Word Hippo is my go-to thesaurus.
Google Ngram helps me work out if the words and phrases an author has used are in popular use, if they’ve made up some scientific jargon, or if there’s a preference between UK and US English.
I can edit manuscripts, but I don’t know anything about landing a publishing deal. For those questions, I direct writers to the New Zealand Society of Authors and the Publishing Association of New Zealand.
English for everyone breaks down grammar and syntax with colours! Amazing! English for everyone and Grammar Girl’s quick and dirty tips are the two grammar books I consult the most. Chicago manual of style also has a comprehensive grammar guide, but I don’t find it as accessible as these other two guides.
This might be a controversial one, but for curly grammar questions that Google just can’t parse, I try perplexity.ai. Yes, it’s a generative AI program and using it involves stepping through an ethical minefield. But it (currently) does a much better job of showing its sources than ChatGPT. When I can see its sources, I can judge the sources’ quality.
If you have any other resources on your go-to list, do let me know what they are. We can also add them to the online resources section on the IPEd members-only page.