Rewriting and Substantive Editing

This is a practical course that will help you assess and improve texts efficiently and effectively. Combining practical exercises with group discussion, it will give you new skills and techniques that you can go on to apply to future problems.

You will work on your own, in pairs and in a group to analyse the stylistic problems of different types of text, look at a range of solutions and adjust the presentation and construction to guarantee effective communication.

Learning outcomes

At the end of this course you should be able to:

  • explain why a piece of writing doesn’t work
  • present strategies for improving pieces of writing
  • adjust the level and tone of a piece of writing
  • apply the techniques learnt to any text to enhance its accessibility and sense.

This course contributes to PUB 14 and PUB 19 of the Book & Journal Publishing National Occupational Standards.

Who will benefit from this course?

Editorial staff and freelancers who need to rewrite text presented to them.

Programme

  • Identifying problems and considering solutions
  • Assessing message and medium, audience
  • Rewriting text
    • To change the level
    • To clarify the message
  • Analysing style
    • To add copy
  • Maintaining the author’s voice
  • Reducing the text
    • Without simplifying
    • In order to simplify
  • Editing text written in English as a second language
  • Sentence construction
  • Presentation
  • Specialist vocabulary
  • Editing your own work
  • Checklist – problems and solutions.

Your Tutor

After a spell in teaching and education research, Andrew Steeds worked as a publisher in three of the major UK educational publishing companies before going freelance in 1992. He now runs Simply Put, a company that offers writing, project management and consultancy to organisations that want to communicate more effectively with the full range of their readers.

Continue Reading

Note that most of our short courses can also be run as In-Company events.

  • Dates: 06 November 2014, 10 February 2015, 01 June 2015, 19 October 2015
  • Duration: A one-day course
  • Price: £385+VAT
  • A number of discounts are available

Provisional Booking Form

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If you are entitled to one of our range of discounts, please select one of the following. To check your eligibility, visit our Discounts and Funding page.




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Anything else you’d like to tell us. If you’ve been issued with a voucher from the Publishing Training Centre and you’d like to use it with this booking, or you’d like to book more than three people on this course, let us know here. Alternatively, you can email us directly at This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. :

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