Urrrrrggghhhh …. January.
I envy animals that can simply hibernate through winter, escaping the relentlessly dull, grey, bone-chillingly damp weather.
Every year, I sigh at the sight of Easter eggs on the shelves from January 2, and the uncomfortably long silence from clients who only a month ago were breathlessly checking my availability to support them with their workload. Maybe they’re hibernating too.
However, the world grinds endlessly onwards, so I’ll kick off with recommending a post by Phil Davis on ‘The Scholarly Kitchen’ (https://scholarlykitchen.sspnet.org/2025/01/17/does-altering-a-dataset-merit-retraction/), which relates his tenacious pursuit of upholding scientific integrity when expressing his concern about post-publication changes to data in a study published in the Journal of the Association for Information Science and Technology. It’s a tale of slippery eels and weasel words.
If you’re feeling philosophical, you can do worse than nod in agreement with Dania Sheldon, writing in ‘BoldFace’, who makes a case for honesty being the secret of a fulfilling and successful freelance editing career (https://editorstorontoblog.com/2025/01/08/the-deceptively-simple-key-to-being-a-better-editor/). ‘Fess up – always’.
Finally, if you have the capacity for a wry smile at this time of year, visit Tom Freeman, the original ‘Stroppy Editor’ for his observations on common tautologies which persist in language, usually because of legal elaboration (https://stroppyeditor.wordpress.com/2025/01/09/stop-and-stop/). Anyone who can write about this while weaving in a dig at Liz Truss is a friend of mine.