Advanced Copy-Editing

This course is designed for editors who have some experience and who wish to extend their skills and knowledge. It tackles a range of complex material that presents challenges in comprehension, structure and consistency. The course is exercise-based so that you learn through practice as well as discussion. One exercise also involves looking at the proofs of the material to see how the resolution of copy-editing difficulties has worked in practice.

The course will cover:

  • an in-depth exploration of the issues that arise when working on a multi-author reference works
  • an examination of complex texts with the aim of helping you to see how to use existing skills and knowledge to tackle difficult pieces with confidence
  • the script of a textbook being prepared for a second edition, discussing the requirements of the job
  • rewriting texts to avoid problems.

Programme

  • Multi-author works
    • Different editorial styles
    • Different approaches to presentation
    • Making biographical information uniform
  • Complexity
    • Ensuring clarity of presentation
    • Creating a table
    • Linguistics
    • Assigning structure
  • Working on second editions
    • Technical and procedural requirements of the job
    • Exercise: did the copy-editing mark-up create or resolve problems for the typesetter?
  • What’s the problem?
  • Working with non-native English
    • Delegates are invited to bring along their own examples for discussion
  • How should they have said it? Rewriting workshop
    • Common grammatical errors
    • Ways to clarify ambiguity
    • Avoiding unwelcome nuance, innuendo, anachronism, parochialism, sexism and other unacceptable usages – and howlers!
  • Questions and discussion.

Who will benefit from this course?

Experienced editors and those who have already attended The Publishing Training Centre’s Copy-Editing Skills training course, or a similar programme.

Your Tutor

Margaret Aherne has worked in publishing since 1986 as a proofreader, copy-editor, project manager and tutor/mentor for a number of clients, including Blackwell, Oxford University Press, Routledge and the Audit Commission. She is a tutor on The Publishing Training Centre’s Basic Proofreading by Distance Learning course and is the junior co-author, with Gillian Clarke, of the latest edition. She also assesses applicants for Wiley-Blackwell’s copy-editing and project management teams, creating and setting the tests, marking them and giving feedback, then mentoring new project managers. She is a founder member of the Society for Editors and Proofreaders (SfEP), for whom she organises training courses in the Bristol area. She is also a mentor in proofreading and copy-editing on the SfEP’s mentoring scheme.

Continue Reading

Note that most of our short courses can also be run as in-company events.

  • Dates: 10 July 2012, 22 November 2012
  • Duration: A one-day course
  • Price: £385+VAT
  • A number of discounts are available

Provisional Booking Form

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