Victoria Faraon
Hello! My name is Victoria Faraon and I am the fall copyediting/proofreading intern for Studies in the Literary Imagination, a biannual scholarly journal focused on special topics in literature. In these past two weeks, I have met with our managing editor, Olivia Ivings, to discuss my responsibilities. Additionally, I have been reading a previous journal issue to become acquainted with the style and the MLA 9th Edition Handbook to brush up on my MLA skills.
On September 4th, I met with Olivia Ivings to discuss what I would accomplish during this fall internship. My main role is to complete and ensure the following:
- Look out for formatting, specifically ensuring that the essays we receive are in the correct MLA formatting
- Checking for grammatical errors and sentence structure
- Fact-check information that isn’t particularly obvious
We are still waiting for the essays to come in and Olivia expects them to arrive around two weeks from now. How we plan to work is that Olivia will receive the essay first and locate the majority of errors and edits that need to be made. She will then pass the document over to me, where I will check for additional grammatical errors, correct MLA formatting, and fact-check sources and information found within the essay. The essay goes back to Olivia–where she will check in with the author for approval of the edits–and then will go to another member of the team for a final review.
Olivia lent me an MLA 9th Edition Handbook to use during my internship and a copy of our previous issue to look over in the meantime. She plans to invite me to the Trello for SLI and will send documents and resources that will be useful for the start of my internship. The goal for when we receive the essays is to complete 1-2 every two weeks. If I have any questions or concerns while editing, I am to reach out to Olivia via email or in person when she is in the office.
Furthermore, she offered to introduce me to typesetting towards the end of the internship if I was interested. Typesetting is the process by which we arrange the pages in a way that is ready for publication. This involves manipulation with formatting, fonts, and spacing.
What I hope to accomplish during my time with SLI is to gain a stronger understanding of what editing academic material is like. I wish to hone in on my ability to objectively edit (in the case of SLI, we rarely make stylistic changes). I plan on improving my technical skills and enhancing my understanding of copyediting and proofreading. Additionally, becoming strongly acquainted with MLA will be beneficial as my expertise is so far only in Chicago.
I am excited about what this internship will bring, and I look forward to working with the SLI team this semester!
