The University of British Columbia (UBC)’s Department of Chemistry is housed in one of the most beautiful buildings on campus (which you may have seen in one or two X-Files episodes). But even more beautiful is what goes on inside the building: it’s home to world-class researchers whose work has contributed to groundbreaking discoveries and scientific developments.
And since these scientists are in the same city as Talk Science to Me, we were excited to have an opportunity to work with some of them last month. Talk Science was hired to copy-edit seven grant proposals for funding from the Canadian Foundation for Innovation (CFI). The proposals we worked on outlined innovative ways to address issues ranging from climate change to cancer treatment.
Our time on this project was limited, so our job was to provide the valuable new set of eyes that can kick a document up from great to fantastic. Copy-editing is often described by degrees: light, medium, heavy. These labels refer to the types of things the copy editor is looking for as well as the types of changes they are going to make. In a light copy-edit, which is what we did for this project, we look for typos, punctuation errors and inconsistent formatting. We don’t make any large-scale changes, but might make a suggestion for rewording if a particular sentence is difficult to understand. The proposal writers have spent hours focusing on the details of their projects, and it’s easy for small language and formatting errors to slip in. That’s why it’s vital to have someone outside the project review the documents.
The researchers at UBC are involved in wide-ranging projects that seek to improve elements of British Columbia’s health care, agriculture, economy and standing in the international science community. Reading about all the projects in the works at UBC is exciting—we love knowing that so much advanced science is happening in our city.
Intrigued? Check out what the chemistry experts at UBC are doing here.