*I wonder why this crowdsourcing and automation site would claim that it is putting editors "back to work" when it's so obviously disrupting the publishing enterprise. Do they think that editors never read news, I wonder?
*Also: this is probably the most literate, nicely punctuated spam that I've yet seen.
For Immediate Release
New Jobs in Editing
A New Generation of Technology Puts Editors Back to Work
LONDON - 8-Dec-2011. There's good news for editors - finally. After years of brutal job cuts hitting newspapers around the world, globalisation has spiralled up the demand for top-quality English-language editing. And today Intelligent Editing, the leading provider of software for professional proofreaders and editors, announced the launch of PerfectIt 1.4. PerfectIt is a powerful add-in for MS Word that helps find difficult-to-locate mistakes and helps editors push into new markets.
In the global marketplace, English-speaking editors have an advantage. As experts in the English language itself, they're unlikely to see their jobs outsourced to low-wage countries. In fact, the reverse is true. Growth in emerging economies has created a worldwide demand for English-speaking editors by businesses, governments and academic institutions.
Two new technologies are helping make editors more efficient and more competitive in the current global economy, as well as allowing them to enter new markets, such as directly assisting self-publishing authors and emerging economy businesses.
* PerfectIt, from Intelligent Editing, helps editors cut costs by automating routine steps.
* Wordy.com is a website that links businesses and individuals to editors around the world in real time.
The Paper Cuts blog reports that between 2008 and 2009, over 30,000 jobs were eliminated at newspapers in the United States. Editors were among the hardest hit, as newspapers cut costs. Although the rate of cuts has fallen since 2010, there were still more than 3,500 jobs lost at U.S. newspapers in 2011. This trend is not restricted to the U.S. In October 2011, the Times and Sunday Times in the UK announced the loss of 150 positions.
To help ensure their value in a cost-conscious economy, editors are adopting new tools and methods to improve their efficiency. Alex Painter from Editorial Training in London said "The notion of editors as out of date and out of touch is itself outdated. Most are quick to take advantage of technology when it helps them get the job done on time and to budget." (((I'd like to see this same argument applied to, say, sound engineers on vinyl records. They've got so much value in a cost-conscious economy that they no longer exist.)))
That's the focus of PerfectIt. PerfectIt 1.4 is an add-in for Microsoft Word that helps find difficult-to-locate mistakes that no spelling or grammar checker can spot. Over 100 members of the Society for Editors and Proofreaders (SfEP) have purchased the software to date because it helps them spot errors like:
* inconsistent hyphenation
* words that appear in capitals in one place but lowercase elsewhere
* numbers in sentences
* abbreviations that have not been defined.
The most recent version adds the capability to customize style sheets - documents where editors keep track of how people's names are spelled and what their correct titles are, among other things - with additional comments so that users can see important exceptions to house style rules. It means that PerfectIt can check a greater number of style guides with more accuracy than ever before.
Daniel Heuman, managing director of Intelligent Editing, said "Sometimes businesses use PerfectIt before it goes to the editor; sometimes editors use it themselves. The result is the same: it takes less time to get through a document. Now editors can push into new markets, such as the booming self-publishing and e-book sectors." (((I don't think we're too far away from a Siri-dictated ebook. Machine-generated texts have been predicted for a long time, but the really interesting part will be if machines pay to read those texts. I'm thinking maybe finance news that's more-or-less human-legible, yet read by investment algorithms at more-than-human speed. Nobody ever talks about *readers* being disintermediated in the value chain of publishing, but when you think of it, readers are obviously the fattest and laziest segment of the whole business.)))
While PerfectIt helps deliver the work, Wordy helps connect editors to their clients. The response to Wordy.com from editors has been overwhelming. In the site's first year, more than 700 editors asked to join, far exceeding the site's current capacity. Anders Schepelern, the CEO of Wordy.com, said "Editors see the potential the global marketplace offers. A business in China can send Wordy a document at the end of their working day. An editor in the UK can put that into perfect English and have it back to China before anyone has woken up the next morning."
PerfectIt is available for a free 30 day trial or from $49 to purchase at:
http://www.intelligentediting.com
Wordy can provide an instant quote for work from editors around the world:
http://www.wordy.com
About Intelligent Editing
Intelligent Editing Ltd specialises in software that delivers faster, more accurate editing for professionals. Their philosophy is that good software lets you write your way. They don't use templates or input fields or anything else that restricts your writing. They design software that quickly and easily helps professionals create the best documents.
About Wordy
Wordy is a real-time, human, copyediting and proofreading service that optimises the accuracy, consistency and readability of content from Fortune 500 business reports to website copy.
Media Contact
Daniel Heuman, Managing Director, Intelligent Editing
Related Links
http://www.intelligentediting.com
