Getting Out the Red Pencil
Being a copyeditor is not that different from being a writer. As a writer, you strive to go by the rules of punctuation, grammar and sentence structure so that what you've written is exactly what you meant to say.
You also haf to wattch yore speling, knot ownly to make shore yore reeder kan understand whatz bin ritten, but to kreate a faverable impreshun as a riter. (I think this paragraph might have just sent a few copyeditors off to find some Tylenol.)
Copyeditors keep grammar, punctuation, sentence structure and spelling in mind as well. Another task for copyeditors is dealing with plagiarism; much like a writer has to be mindful of plagiarism and crediting quotes they've used. Copyeditors also deal with deadlines, much like writers often work under deadlines. But copyediting is an "after the fact" task, occurring after text has been written. The word "edit" is a writer's best friend. The word "edit" defines what a copyeditor does.
Barbara Bell has constructed a FREE course that offers a threshold for each of us to possibly become a Copyeditor on the CpE Team. The course not only gives insight as to what is expected from that position, it also explains the tools that Suite101 provides each member of the team in order to accomplish the unique task of copyediting. There is also a bit of background information concerning copyeditors in general and Suite101 Feature Writers and Copyeditors in specific.
Although the course was originally intended for that reason, taking it and reading the items linked in it, offers the chance to take another look at our writings and proofread them in a more technical way.
Before reading through the course information, I never paid much attention to the fact that copyeditors use the AP Style guidelines. It's just not something a person thinks about when reading. So, after completing the course, the first thing I did was to read a copy of a local newspaper. I had "skim-read" it earlier; however, that time I read it with editing style in mind. It was interesting to read the news for structure and guideline-adherence, rather than content.
Copyeditors are a quiet, behind-the-scenes group, and (as this course points out) they are an integral part of this community. Approximately how much time is necessary to spend editing each article that is given to a copyeditor here? As stated in the course: "You should expect to spend between 15 minutes to half an hour per article reviewing the article, making corrections, and checking sources, HTML, and links." That's about the amount of time each of us allots to one of our articles just before we decide it's finally ready to "go public".
Being a copyeditor is not that different from being a writer. As a writer, you strive to go by the rules of punctuation, grammar and sentence structure so that what you've written is exactly what you meant to say.
You also haf to wattch yore speling, knot ownly to make shore yore reeder kan understand whatz bin ritten, but to kreate a faverable impreshun as a riter. (I think this paragraph might have just sent a few copyeditors off to find some Tylenol.)
Copyeditors keep grammar, punctuation, sentence structure and spelling in mind as well. Another task for copyeditors is dealing with plagiarism; much like a writer has to be mindful of plagiarism and crediting quotes they've used. Copyeditors also deal with deadlines, much like writers often work under deadlines. But copyediting is an "after the fact" task, occurring after text has been written. The word "edit" is a writer's best friend. The word "edit" defines what a copyeditor does.
Barbara Bell has constructed a FREE course that offers a threshold for each of us to possibly become a Copyeditor on the CpE Team. The course not only gives insight as to what is expected from that position, it also explains the tools that Suite101 provides each member of the team in order to accomplish the unique task of copyediting. There is also a bit of background information concerning copyeditors in general and Suite101 Feature Writers and Copyeditors in specific.
Although the course was originally intended for that reason, taking it and reading the items linked in it, offers the chance to take another look at our writings and proofread them in a more technical way.
Before reading through the course information, I never paid much attention to the fact that copyeditors use the AP Style guidelines. It's just not something a person thinks about when reading. So, after completing the course, the first thing I did was to read a copy of a local newspaper. I had "skim-read" it earlier; however, that time I read it with editing style in mind. It was interesting to read the news for structure and guideline-adherence, rather than content.
Copyeditors are a quiet, behind-the-scenes group, and (as this course points out) they are an integral part of this community. Approximately how much time is necessary to spend editing each article that is given to a copyeditor here? As stated in the course: "You should expect to spend between 15 minutes to half an hour per article reviewing the article, making corrections, and checking sources, HTML, and links." That's about the amount of time each of us allots to one of our articles just before we decide it's finally ready to "go public".
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