Our Editors rock! There I said it for all to read. Not only do they juggling multiple clients on a daily basis, they are also ensuring that each client’s news is distributed accurately and on a timely basis.

Though not every Editor can win he Hawk Eye award, the following are two individuals that hand an outstanding month and helped many of our clients. Congratulations to Joshua Moore for noticing several irregularities throughout the month, but his main catch for the month was correcting a dead URL link. He realized that anything after the “.com” in a URL is case sensitive. Changing the case of after the .com corrected the URL and made sure the link was live and active. Not to be outdone, Alberto Carta-Guerrero also noticed that a URL for a client’s webcast was linking to their pervious quarters. Correcting this saved the client a lot of potential embarrassment and the cost of a correction release. Well done guys!

To get to know our winners better, we’ve asked them the following fun questions. Unfortunately Alberto wasn’t able to get his answers to us in time.

Joshua Moore, Associate Editor (Toronto)

• What does Beyond Words mean to you?
  Media, especially press and news media, are drastically changing as we move full-force into an almost exclusively digital era of communications. Words alone are no longer sufficient. We must communicate with all media in order to connect. It is our role to facilitate that this communication extends far “beyond words.”
• What’s your favourite movie?
  Monty Python’s “The Meaning of Life”
• What’s your favourite movie quote?
  “And finally, monsieur, a wafer-thin mint.”
• What’s your favourite colour?
  Green. It’s just so lively!
• What’s your favourite day of the week?
  Wednesdays: that’s my night out after work. $3 bottles of beer at the pub near my house are pretty much the most exciting thing I do outside of work.
• Cat or Dog?
  Living in the city, I’d only ever have a cat. If I had more space, I’d keep both as pets. I always grew up with 2 dogs and 2 cats.
• What was the last book you read?
  “The Favourite Game” by Leonard Cohen
• If you could meet anyone dead or alive, who would that be?
  Rod Serling (from the Twilight Zone) or Alfred Hitchcock.
• If you could travel to any region in the world, where would it be?
  I would love to spend a good amount of time somewhere rural in the West Indies. Alternatively, Northern Italy.
• Mac or PC?
  PC, running Windows and Ubuntu.
• Windows, IOS, or Android?
  Android forever!
• If I could eat any food what would it be?
  I feel like I could probably eat any food that I want nowadays, in this Global Village. However, I have always wanted to eat sushi that’s been properly prepared.
• If you were stranded on a desert island, what would you want with you?
  A copy of James Joyce’s “Finnegan’s Wake.” Oh, and probably a big knife.
• What would you do during a zombie attack?
  This really depends on where I am when it goes down. I would secure the area, prevent anyone from getting in or out, and figure out what available provisions I have. I have a firm plan at my apartment, but if this happened while at work, then we’d definitely have too many people to just board ourselves up.
• Anything else you want to share?
  I think the work we do at Marketwire is very important, and we are on the forefront of a new generation of communications. I hope that we can all learn from one another so that we can collectively become the leaders in not only-traditional media, but masters of the internet. Yeah, I said “masters of the internet.”

Congratulations to you both and everyone else in Editorial who do amazing work on a daily basis.

By Adam Lovinus, Associate Editor

The Marketwire SEO Analyzer measures how well you’ve incorporated your SEO strategy into your latest press release.

Journalists and investors rely on search engines for information gathering. This is why modern press releases should be written with SEO in mind, so that your news has maximum visibility and relevance for those who are looking for it. The cornerstone of producing content that indexes on internet searches is to target a specific keyword phrase, and work it in at five key points throughout the press release — the headline, first paragraph, multimedia elements, embedded URLs, and the backend of the release.

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It’s hard to believe that another month has come and gone and we have some new Editorial Hawk Eye awards to give out.

This month’s winners did an amazing job and catching errors within a release and helped our clients avoid serious fall backs from the mistakes. Congratulations goes out to Deniellie Dy for noticing a financial number in the headline didn’t match the financial number in the first paragraph of a release. She also caught the wrong date listed for a conference call on another client. Melissa Houde from our Montreal office was quick enough to catch the incorrect spelling of a Minister’s name for a release relating to that Ministry.

To get to know our editors better we had them answer some fun filled questions which the graciously answered below.

Denielli Dy, Associate Editor (Los Angeles)

• What does Beyond Words mean to you?
  Beyond Words, for me, means combining actions with words – not just settling with written verbiage, but backing it up with action.
• What’s your favourite movie?
  (500) Days of Summer ♥
• What’s your favourite movie quote?
  “I take pleasure in the details. You know… a Quarter-Pounder with cheese, those are good, the sky about ten minutes before it starts to rain, the moment where your laughter become a cackle… and I, I sit back and I smoke my Camel Straights and I ride my own melt.” – Troy Dyer, Reality Bites
• What’s your favourite colour?
  White
• What’s your favourite day of the week?
  Friday, it’s my day off.  :)
• Cat or Dog?
  Dog
• What was the last book you read?
  Henry and June: From the Unexpurgated Diary of Anaïs Nin
• If you could meet anyone dead or alive, who would that be?
  Jesus
• If you could travel to any region in the world, where would it be?
  Europe ♥
• Windows, iOS, or Android?
  iOS
• If I could eat any food what would it be?
  I have not tried foie gras, so maybe I’d pick that.
• If you were stranded on a desert island, what would you want with you?
  Cell phone! So I can ask for help and keep myself occupied while waiting. Plus, I can take beautiful pictures of the island and Instagram them!
• What would you do during a zombie attack?
  Play dead, teehee

Melissa Houde, Editor (Montreal)

• What does Beyond Words mean to you?
  That we do such a great job, and offer such  great service that it leaves the client utterly speechless.
• What’s your favourite movie?
  I don’t know if I have a favorite movie per se, but I’ll definitely watch any of the Bridget Jones anytime!
• What’s your favourite movie quote?
  This did make me laugh out loud: Mark Darcy: Alright Cleaver, outside.  Daniel Cleaver: Should I bring my dueling pistols or my swords? (I suppose that as is it isn’t all that funny, but that whole scene, to me, is comedy gold.)
• What’s your favourite colour?
  It’s a tie between green and yellow :)
• What’s your favourite day of the week?
  Saturday
• Cat or Dog?
  Dog
• What was the last book you read?
  Game of Thrones: A Storm of Swords – Slowly making my way through all 5 books!
• If you could meet anyone dead or alive, who would that be?
  My Granddad who died before I was born.
• If you could travel to any region in the world, where would it be?
  In Canada: to the Maritimes, anywhere else: definitely the UK and Ireland!!
• Windows, iOS, or Android?
  Neither
• If I could eat any food what would it be?
  Oh dear….   If it was actually good for you, I’d say ice cream.
• If you were stranded on a desert island, what would you want with you?
  A boat
• What would you do during a zombie attack?
  Crap!  I knew I should have read The Zombie Survival Guide!

Congratulations to you both and all the other Editors who were nominated in July!

For media professionals, communication is what it’s all about — clear, concise and sometimes clever messaging is essential. But, if you’ve ever flipped through a technical journal on immunological bioinformatics or a dissertation on electrophoretic systems (both of which are actual disciplines), you probably didn’t understand, much less were able to pronounce, many words even though these documents are (seemingly) written in English. That’s because they were written for an audience that has the vocabulary to understand those concepts. They’re “all Greek” to people within the general population. (more…)

There are no hidden secrets or short-cuts to editorial proofreading, even though, as writers and editors, we sometimes wish there were. Proofreading requires a meticulous attention to detail and a little patience.

Below is a good checklist to ensure your conscientiousness pays off with well-written, easy-to-understand and error-free content:

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