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Copyediting for Technical Documentation
(One-day workshop)
Date(s):
Sep 24 | Nov30
Instructor(s): Peter Keville | Kate Merlino
Description
This workshop is a hands-on review of what it means to be a professional technical editor. This workshop is for technical writers and editors who want to sharpen their editing skills. The course covers a range of best-practice copyediting techniques with an emphasis on improving your competence, speed, and confidence in reviewing technical manuscripts. Topics include a review of the technical writer as editor, editorial rules and style guides, copyediting techniques and proofreading symbols, types and levels of editing, the writer-editor review process, and online versus paper editing. Included are refresher-to-intensive copyediting exercises, a quick reference on editorial tips, and grammar and effective writing checklists.
Prerequisites
The course assumes that participants have at least two years of technical writing/editing experience and are generally familiar with: Common editorial rules and in-house style guides, general copyediting techniques and proofreading symbols, types and levels of editing, editing and rewriting, and the writer/editor review process.
Topics Include
- Lesson 1: Role of the Technical Editor
- The role of the Editor
- Effective writing checklist
- Definition of editorial terms
- Editing procedures and tips
- Editing principles
- Lesson 2: Marking copy using proofreaders' marks
- Proofreaders' marks
- Exercise: practice marking copy
- Lesson 3: Copyediting: Three groups of changes
- Lesson 4: Group 1 – 'Down-and-Out' Wrong
- Exercise: spelling
- Why punctuation matters
- Punctuation rules
- Exercise: punctuation
- Dangling and misplaced modifiers
- Exercise: Dangling and misplaced modifiers
- Guidelines on pronoun/antecedent agreement
- Subject/verb agreement
- Exercise: Subject/verb agreement
- Parts of speech
- Parts of sentences
- Restrictive and nonrestrictive clauses
- Exercise: Restrictive and nonrestrictive clauses
- Who/Whom
- Exercise: Who/Whom
- Hyphenation
- Exercise: Hyphenation
- Lesson 5: Group 2 – Editorial Consistency
- Consistency of style
- Sample style sheet
- Exercise: Editorial consistency
- Lesson 6: Group 3 – Editorial enhancements/improvements
- Using sensitive language
- Exercise: using sensitive language
- Repeating over and over, not only stating, but restating the obvious
- Exercise: redundancy
- Smothered verbs and other words
- Exercise: Smothered verbs
- To be or not to be – active and passive voice
- Exercise: Passive voice
- Exercise: Active and Passive voice
- What's wrong with this picture? Parallelism
- Exercise: parallelism
- Lesson 7: Practice copyediting
- Exercise: practice copyediting
- Lesson 8: Levels of editing
- Assessing needs and determining levels of edit
- Factors influencing edit time
- Guidelines for time estimates
- Developing and using a checklist
- Needs and levels of edit, again
- Lesson 9: Practice assessing and copyediting
To learn more about nSight training programs and for assistance, please contact our Training department at 781-273-6300 or Training@nSightWorks.com.
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Download Fall 2007 Workshop Schedule
nSight is a Certified Provider member of the International Association for Continuing Education and Training (IACET)—a nonprofit association dedicated to quality continuing education and training programs. nSight is certified to offer continuing education credits (CEUs) to students who successfully complete its training workshops. One (1) CEU is equal to ten (10) contact hours. Learn more at 
