Ever ignored a gut feeling about a potential client and ended up regretting it later? Trust me, I’ve been there. After fourteen years in the freelance editing business, I’ve seen my fair share of red-flag and beige-flag clients.

In this episode of The Modern Editor, I’m sharing what I’ve learned from not-so-great client experiences so you can avoid some of the mistakes I made early on. At the end of the day, you should always pay attention when your spidey senses start tingling.

• (1:14) You Can’t Avoid All Red Flags
• (1:45) Don’t Pay for Anything Up Front
• (2:46) Don’t Accept Payment in Royalties
• (5:23) Avoid Clients Who Want to Argue Over Your Rate
• (9:14) Always Maintain Your Boundaries
• (11:00) Contracts Are Nonnegotiable
• (11:46) Avoid Clients Who Lie to You
• (13:12) Don’t Work with Clients Who Ghost You
• (15:26) Pay Attention to How They Behave Online
• (17:13) Avoid Clients Who Hate Feedback
• (18:40) The Freelance Editors Club is Reopened!
• (19:20) New Client Beige Flags That Could Turn Into Red Flags
• (22:26) How to Protect Yourself from Client Red Flags

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• ACES directory

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Do you pass the mantle or mantel?

In this episode of The Modern Editor, I’m back with more commonly confused words I’ve come across in my years of editing. Some of these might be easy for you to spot, while others are trickier. Either way, it’s important to keep an eye out so these words don’t fall through the cracks.

In case you missed it, listen to part one here!

(1:15) Mantel and Mantle

(2:00) Medal, Metal, Meddle, and Mettle

(3:30) Affect and Effect

(5:07) Compliment and Complement

(5:53) Course and Coarse

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As an editor, I see commonly confused words all the time. There are the super common ones we all know (to/too/two, etc.), but lately I've been spotting a handful of less commonly confused words over and over again while copyediting manuscripts.

Whether it's the result of speech-to-text software, typing too quickly, or our brains simply filling in what we expect to see, these mistakes seem to be popping up for me lately. I figured I should highlight them in an episode of The Modern Editor so that you can watch out for them too!

• (1:32) Stock and Stalk
• (2:17) Break and Brake
• (2:45) Phase and Faze
• (3:21) Peak, Peek, and Pique
• (4:06) Casualty and Causality
• (4:42) Keep a List of the Commonly Confused Words You Encounter While Copyediting

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