Introduction to Copyediting

KIM CATANZARITE

Introduction to Copyediting

KIM CATANZARITE

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Copy editors are not the stars of the show when it comes to publishing and news media but they do help the stars to shine. If you’ve thought about becoming a copy editor but you’re not sure how to go about it, this is the course for you. It’s also a fitting course for college students who want to work for the school newspaper, creative writers who want to self-edit their manuscripts, teachers needing to brush up on the real-world basics for their English courses, and businesspeople striving to sound as competent and together on the page as they possibly can.

The heart of each session is a lecture that discusses important aspects of being a copy editor. Not only will students learn what a copy editor does and how she does it, they will also learn the crucial grammatical rules that will put them at the top of their game. Practice exercises allow them hands-on participation, and writing assignments reinforce each week’s skills.

Copy editors are sentence polishers—they delete redundancies, add words for clarity, re-cast passive sentences, fact-check, keep an ever-watchful eye out for consistency, and much more. In order to stay on track, a copy editor uses a variety of tools of the trade. Not only a dictionary but various stylebooks, computer software, and yes, sometimes even a red pencil. Writers count on copy editors to catch what might otherwise be embarrassing mistakes.

In order to make the leap into the real world of editing, students will need experience. The last session guides students onto a path that will help them to obtain experience and land a job.

Join the Waitlist

Subscribe to be notified when this course opens for registration.

Copy editors are not the stars of the show when it comes to publishing and news media but they do help the stars to shine. If you’ve thought about becoming a copy editor but you’re not sure how to go about it, this is the course for you. It’s also a fitting course for college students who want to work for the school newspaper, creative writers who want to self-edit their manuscripts, teachers needing to brush up on the real-world basics for their English courses, and businesspeople striving to sound as competent and together on the page as they possibly can.

The heart of each session is a lecture that discusses important aspects of being a copy editor. Not only will students learn what a copy editor does and how she does it, they will also learn the crucial grammatical rules that will put them at the top of their game. Practice exercises allow them hands-on participation, and writing assignments reinforce each week’s skills.

Copy editors are sentence polishers—they delete redundancies, add words for clarity, re-cast passive sentences, fact-check, keep an ever-watchful eye out for consistency, and much more. In order to stay on track, a copy editor uses a variety of tools of the trade. Not only a dictionary but various stylebooks, computer software, and yes, sometimes even a red pencil. Writers count on copy editors to catch what might otherwise be embarrassing mistakes.

In order to make the leap into the real world of editing, students will need experience. The last session guides students onto a path that will help them to obtain experience and land a job.

Course outline

Course outline

Each session includes a written lecture, exercises to further your learning, and a writing assignment to turn in for personalized feedback from your instructor. To get the most from this workshop, you should have decent writing skills and a strong command of the English language.


Meet the instructor

Kim Catanzarite

Kim Catanzarite is a freelance copy editor who has over thirty years’ experience in the editorial field. Her client list includes Writer’s Digest Books, Random House, Meredith Corporation, Ten Speed Press, and many other American book publishers as well as indie authors. She has edited hundreds of nonfiction and fiction titles in a vast variety of genres from how-to to memoir to writing guides and novels, as well as magazines and newspapers. Kim has been an instructor for Writer’s Digest University since 2015; she teaches three copyediting courses.

Kim’s editing career began in 1989 at a small newspaper in northern New Jersey, where she learned hands-on the process of editing, article writing, layout, and publishing. She also worked for two book-publishing companies—one of the big five in New York City and another smaller publishing house in New Jersey—where she took nonfiction titles from raw manuscript to finished product. After several years on the job, she decided to freelance.

Kim received her B.A. in English from Skidmore College and continued her education at the New York Summer Writers Institute and the Emerson College writing and publishing graduate program. She is an accomplished writer who has published articles in national magazines, such as Better Homes and Gardens and Woman’s Day, and newspapers. Her fiction and poetry has won prizes and appeared in literary magazines.

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