TECHNIQUES
Discipline yourself to cut every shot as if it was the most important shot in the movie.
Be careful with short shots. Latent image edge numbers that are placed by film manufacturers on negative film are for final phase matching of the negative to the edited work print. And these have to be visible on the workprint. (If they're not the lab should give you another free workprint of that scene or of the whole movie if necessary -- of course, somebody should alert them out of courtesy as soon as the problem is detected.)
And also the consecutive numbers occur on every foot of the film (every 16 frames of 35mm film). If your cut is shorter than 16 frames, it's possible that there won't be any numbers present on the section of the shot that you're using. At such times you must write in the number with a sharpie onto the edge of the shot so that the negative cutter can find the shot in the negative rolls.
There is a whole system of nomenclature for marking edited workprints that is standard procedure in editing. There are published lab procedure manuals. You should have one in your possession, if you intend to do a lot of editing.
You should mark the workprint clearly so that the negative cutter can prepare your film for final cutting without making any mistakes!
Fades are marked by a "V-shaped" line (literally like this: < or >) that runs horizontally along the frames where you want the effect to begin and end. The open part of the "V" is where the shot is printed at normal light level (fade-out starts like this: >), and the pointed part of the "V" is where the shot is printed with no light as the printer light is diminished smoothly to effect the fade-out. Fade-ins reverse the procedure and are marked with the "V" starting the shot with the pointed part of the "V" (fade-ins start like this: <).
A dissolve is really the fade-out of one shot and the fade-in of the next one, and are marked with both symbols overlapping each other, looking like a wide "X" or "><".