A word on Wordy

This article was first published in the March/April, 2011, issue of SfEP‘s magazine Editing Matters.

This article was edited by Richard at Wordy at 1:05 pm CET. The edit took 35 minutes and cost €8.42. Richard found over 40 errors in the text – all of them preventing me from getting my message across. This speed, price and quality makes for an excellent online service, and after one year in business I have a few thoughts on editing, on Wordy, and on what it takes to turn the two into something viable.
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A note on quality…

This post is a development of a mail I sent out to the editors on Wordy last week. It has to do with the quality of our service, and what we should do to ensure it. After all, when all the nice things about the speed, price and accessibility of Wordy have been said – quality is what keeps us going forward, and customer coming back.
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Wordy Guide for Editors – UK English

Being an editor with Wordy means working from a standardised set of guidelines so that you know exactly what to do, and the client knows exactly what to expect from your work. Editors are expected to be a native speaker of English with a good, professional working knowledge of English language, grammar, usage, punctuation and standard editorial conventions as laid out in New Harts Rules for the UK and the Chicago Manual of Style for the US.
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Quality control of professional copy-editing

Lately I’ve been looking into how to control the quality of output from Wordy. I’m especially interested in companies and services that offer workflow regulated to the extent that they’ve obtained an ISO certification. Why? Because fixed standards and quality control mean much less hassle for editors and the support function, as well as happier, more confident clients. So how do we secure the highest quality in service without having to go to the extent of ISO certification just yet?
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Why copy-editors make a great community!

Since the launch of Wordy in December 2009 I have received a little more than 2,500 mails, of which approximately 50% have been from editors working on Wordy or having a desire to do so. The fantastic thing about all these mails is their great readability, precision and logical structure. When handling 30+ mails per day, this is something you quickly come to appreciate.
And that’s not nearly the only reason why copy-editors make a great community – I can easily add professionalism, passion and the desire to do better to the list.
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