Victoria Faraon
These last two weeks have been slightly uneventful, yet not any less insightful! I spoke with Olivia Ivings and she mentioned our guest editors would be submitting articles no later than last week, however, there has been a bit of a delay. Therefore, while I have not yet gotten my hands on any articles, I have been brushing up on my MLA skillset (specifically in citations) and reviewing the helpful resources Olivia has put into the Trello.
On the Trello, Olivia provided me and fellow editor Karen Javits some notes and resources to get familiar with as we wait for the first few articles to come in. This included a proofreading marks handout, a proofreading checklist, and a PowerPoint presentation about MLA 9th ed. formatting and style guide from the Purdue OWL Staff.
During our first meeting a while back, Olivia mentioned that she’ll sometimes edit on hardcopies and either hand it to me physically or upload it into the Trello. That being said, the proofreading marks guide is a great refresher as I will be encountering familiar markings later in this process. I am familiar with most if not all of these symbols due to the Editing for Publication class I took last spring, so this was a great refresher!
The checklist will be much more helpful as I begin proofreading, though the items are listed succinctly and easy to follow. The checklist gives me a much better understanding of what exactly I will be looking for when I receive my first copy of our articles from our guest editors!
Finally, the MLA PowerPoint guide has been an exceptionally helpful refresher regarding formatting. Although I am used to MLA formatting from the continuous exposure in my English courses, this PowerPoint dives deeper into nuances I don’t typically encounter in my own writing. Some of these nuances include how to cite when two or more works are done by the same author and have the same title, authors with the same last name, and multivolume works. I also learned how to cite the title of a container, meaning works that contain other works. The PowerPoint is a well-organized guide I know I will continue to refer to (as well as the MLA handbook Olivia gave me a while back).
With all this preparation comes anticipation for our first article! Olivia let Karen and I know this week that we should be expecting an issue by tomorrow. Olivia will first look at it and edit it before handing it off to me, and her expectation is that I will officially have my first article by this Friday. She let us know that authors rarely meet the deadlines they set for themselves—so, wishful thinking for Friday! Until then, I will continue to review my resources and prepare!
