I spent Wednesday in London on the one-day course Efficient Copy-editing by Rosemary Roberts, organised by the Society for Editors and Proofreaders.

CPD means time out of the office, juggling the workload, travelling and being on the ball the next day. But however much we may dread making the commitment, my CPD day this week has proved how very important it is to make the effort.

Much of my work this week has been blending with new workflows in two ways.

(i) Less mechanical editing: because of the introduction of automated processing of reference/citation formatting and other mechanical tasks, my primary focus for one client has become checking language.

(ii) Using document management systems: a month ago, all of my work was sent and received by email. By this time next month, I'll be down- and uploading files with two systems.

I have recently found an eloquent description of why writers need editors.

"You hold the whole text in your mind, and you have developed its ideas in sequence right to its conclusion. You can't now put yourself in the reader's place by somehow 'unknowing' any of this. A copy-editor, though, will bring fresh eyes to your text, helping you to reveal your concepts in a logical order."