This session is also available at a discounted rate as part of our 2026 Training Day package. See our full Training Day program for more details.
This co-presented session will explore how passive voice shapes meaning, power, and perception. We’ll review a range of texts, including examples from journalism and scholarly work, and examine how editorial decisions can either clarify or conceal subjects — and how these choices intersect with the ethical principles outlined in the Professional Editorial Standards. We’ll also look at related linguistic mechanisms, such as euphemisms and ergative constructions, and how they can create or reinforce bias by assigning or denying responsibility for specific actions and decisions.
Designed for editors at all levels, this 90-minute session will help you make informed, ethical editorial interventions.
Berna Ozunal is a Certified Professional Editor (Editors Canada) based in Ottawa, where she works as an editor for a national nonprofit. She has extensive experience across diverse materials and subjects. She teaches editing at the postsecondary level and contributes to professional education and mentorship initiatives. She chaired and co-chaired the Editors Canada Standards Committee (2020–2024), which led the development of the 2024 update to the Professional Editorial Standards.
Amber Riaz holds a PhD in English Literature with a focus on South Asian Literature in English and has been editing, proofreading, and teaching for 15+ years. She has taught writing, communications, research skills, and literary analysis in both Ontario and British Columbia, and now conducts webinars on conscious language editing, and decolonization. She is a consultant and a freelance editor, working on technical reports, academic books and articles, academic and trade nonfiction, and fiction.
As a freelance editor, Amber provides developmental and structural edits as well as copy editing and proofreading services for publishers and independent authors. She has worked as a developmental editor on book-length manuscripts, as well as a copy-editor and reviewer for academic journals, publishers, and scholars. Her hallmarks are her attention to detail and her instinct for syntax and style. She embraces the principles of radical copy editing and pays close attention to unconscious bias in written material.