by Joe Wallace
With the caveat that we haven’t consumed the 9th edition of this book yet, the promise of The Art of Editing in the Age of Media Convergence is quite impressive. Over 400 pages of updated material on editing, with a look at the challenges editors face across disciplines including new media, journalism,...
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by Joe Wallace
Believe it or not, new editors, your editing skills are often closely tied to your management skills. Much depends on the nature of your editing job but one thing’s for sure–editing someone else’s work requires the same amount of tact and the interpersonal skills required to be an effective leader.
If you’re one...
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by Joe Wallace
Dear Editor: My writers constantly turn in material that’s off the mark either with rampant errors or directions not followed. I’m starting to think I hired a staff full of idiots. Help!
There are many reasons why writers get it wrong when on assignment. Some of can be laziness, some of it is...
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The most attractive parts of the McGraw-Hill Proofreading Handbook include a how-to on creating a personal style sheet, a section on fact checking, and some advice on how to train your eyes to spot copy errors.
Like the absolutely essential Elements of Style, the Proofreading Handbook is small, compact, and an easy read at just...
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Grammar, punctuation, and AP style–that’s what you get with Vicki Krueger’s Cleaning Your Copy seminar at News University. It’s a two-hour online course focusing on the basics of scrubbing your own copy and being your own editor (at least for the technical stuff.) There are also tips on the most common mistakes and how...
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It’s one thing to make the edits to someone else’s copy…it’s quite another to give them feedback about the changes you’ve made. In my experience, hitting the writer with a newspaper and calling them a moron is quite satisfying, but seldom ever productive. So how do you train a writer to stop abusing the...
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Lori Handeland’s great article on self-editing may be aimed squarely at fiction writers, but writers of nonfiction–especially creative nonfiction and first person essays–would do well to have a look at this, too.
What’s the most important thing about telling a good story? Can you really boil it down to a single mechanical something? Lori’s article...
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Jeff Anderson’s Everyday Editing is really aimed at teachers who want to create more effective writing workshops and educate students on how to self-edit, but this teaching perspective has a lot of value for the everyday writer.
Imagine how this book could change your perspective as a freelance writer editor or a newcomer to the...
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Since 1995, The Slot has provided advice and resources on the fine art of copy writing and editing. This site is packed full of information including a great especially-for-newcomers definition of what a copyeditor does (and does not do).
The site is aimed at copyeditors, but anyone involved in freelance editing or freelance writing should...
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I have long objected to the titles of the “For Dummies” title as fairly insulting. After all, isn’t purchasing one of these books a tacit admission? The tag line “A resource for the rest of us!” doesn’t soften the blow.
That said, if you want to get educated about copyediting and proofreading, Copyediting and Proofreading...
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