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Copyediting II (WCWP-40237)
10 Weeks | Online

Practice judicious and defensible editing in Copyediting II so you can master how to thrive as a copyeditor (or “copy editor”) in the modern-day workplace. This class will prepare you for Copyediting III and acquaint you with a medium edit, one of the three levels of copyediting covered in the program. It will also give you a solid grounding in fostering healthy author-editor relationships, recognizing bias in language, mastering common editorial practices, and addressing subjective writing errors. Copyediting II is focused not only on acquainting you with the purpose of a medium edit, but also conducting a medium edit. You will be continually challenged to maintain the author’s voice and meaning, while correcting subjective errors that result in convoluted writing. This course will also introduce you to the professional art of querying so you can practice communicating with the author through sensitive and appropriate copyediting inquiries. We will study parallelism and sentence structure to address bias in language and math or statistical information, and how to best edit and present factual information. You will also have the opportunity to understand copyediting as a business venture, as well as how to freelance copyedit and best practices associated with both.

What You Will Learn:

  • Gain additional practice with style sheets and electronic editing.
  • Delve deeper into The Chicago Manual of Style, editing for standardized content style.
  • Explore varying editorial best practices.
  • Perform a medium edit—revising and improving those language elements identified in class.
  • Find answers to usage questions in The Chicago Manual of Style.
  • Use professional queries to provide feedback to authors.
  • Nominalizations and tackling wordiness.
  • Apply bias-free language usage.
  • Demonstrate the essentials of web editing.

Quarters Offered: Winter, Spring, Summer, Fall | Online
Prerequisite: Copyediting I (WCWP-40236)
Requirements: Microsoft Word 2016/Office 365 (PC or Mac) or higher required. Access to a printer and scanner or scanning app required.
Next class: To continue progress in the Copyediting Certificate, the next class is Copyediting III.

Contact: For more information about this course, please email ahl@ucsd.edu.

Note: Fulfills 3 units toward requirements for the Copyediting Certificate. This online course is not self-paced. There are assignments and readings with weekly due dates. Please purchase textbooks before class begins.

Course Number: WCWP-40237
Credit: 3.00 unit(s)
Related Certificate Programs: Copyediting

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