The Open Desk

Margie Beilharz

Freelance editor and writer in science, environment, education, health

Note: I am not taking new clients

Tag: editing

  • Making a PDF more readable with bookmarks

    Making a PDF more readable with bookmarks

    Let’s say you’ve created or edited a report – it’s all nicely laid out and you will be saving it as a PDF file. Before you do, take some time to think about PDF bookmarks. With a bit of forethought, you can make the document much more user-friendly than a long, unstructured PDF. For one…

  • Book review: Make grammar great again

    What do you do when Donald Trump becomes president of the United States? Stop watching the news? Book a flight into space? Hope the next four years will pass really quickly? Melbourne copyeditor Meredith Forrester took a more proactive approach. Irritated by the President’s language-mangling tweets, she took it upon herself to respond with corrections.

  • Showing off your mark-up in PDFs

    This tip was written for the May 2018 Editors Victoria newsletter. One of the funny things about working as a freelance editor is that often you are not sure how familiar your author or client is with some of the software and techniques we tend to take for granted. Even editors vary in how familiar…

  • Editing Indigenous content and other tips

    I include a regular ‘Tips and tricks’ column in the Editors Victoria newsletter, linking to many online resources and tools. This month I wrote about editing Indigenous content [IPEd archive, members only] – highlighting a discussion and resources presented at the national editors’ conference in Brisbane last year.

  • Event: Finding work

    The 22 February Finding work panel discussion (see previous post) was written up by Danielle Vecchio for the Editors Victoria March newsletter. You can read the summary of tips and ideas here.

  • All about the business of editing: July 2017 newsletter

    I’ve just sent out the July 2017 newsletter for Editors Victoria to members.  Welcome to the July newsletter for Editors Victoria. We have lots of editing business this month: call-outs for committee members ahead of our August AGM; a comprehensive report on our ‘Business of Editing’ June dinner Q&A; the experience of running a ‘Writing…

  • Review: Lots of tips and procedures for better onscreen editing

    I wrote this review for the Editors Victoria January 2017 newsletter (updated link to IPEd archive, members only) The title of Geoff Hart’s book Effective Onscreen Editing (3rd edition) by no means conveys the full gamut of what this book contains. Indeed, it turns out be over 800 pages long, covering topics as diverse as…

  • Freelancing in-house

    Last month I experienced a side of editing quite alien to my normal freelance life – working in an office in the city full-time for a couple of weeks. Even though I was in the Pearson/Penguin building near Southern Cross station (Melbourne), I was not working in those offices but up on the 6th floor.…

  • Regional meet-ups, metro dinner meetings, training: August 2016 newsletter

    The August newsletter for Editors Victoria is out now, with an interview with editor and author Lucy Treloar, book reviews, events and more

  • Illustrator Judith Rossell, regional meetings and meet editor Susan Pierotti: March 2016 newsletter

    I’ve just sent out the March 2016 newsletter for Editors Victoria. Here’s my intro: Welcome to our March newsletter. In addition to our usual news and resources, this month we have some calls to action: Nick Hudson is keen to get your opinions on Microsoft Word’s grammar checker, and the article he has written about…