CALA’s first cohort of students in the Advanced Diploma in Copyediting, Proofreading, and Fact-Checking are finishing up their final exams this week. The final assignment in the diploma programs puts their skills to the test by asking them to copyedit and fact-check excerpts from a magazine and an eBook, identifying and correct grammatical errors, incorrect word use, mislaid type, inconsistencies in font and layout, and mislabeled or misattributed artwork/photographs. Next, students must reverse engineer style guides for the book and magazine excerpts that were used in the first part of the project. Students must review each excerpt closely to create a guide that enumerates the stylistic choices the authors made, noting, for example, if the document uses a series comma, standard American vocabulary and spelling, indents for the first paragraph of new subchapters, etc.
This month The New York Times also has been testing its readers. Eagle-eyed readers are invited to complete a series of online tests created by the paper’s standards editor, Philip B. Corbett. We have no doubt that our diploma graduates would pass with highest marks. Can you? http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2016/12/12/insider/copy-edit-this-quiz-2.html?_r=0
Applications for the spring semester diploma program are due January 4th. Apply now!
Advanced Diploma in Copyediting, Proofreading, and Fact-Checking
I have just passed along the link to this post to my Writing Creative Nonfiction students. At the end of the term, once they have generated viable drafts, we begin to discuss the editing process. It’s an essential skill for every writer to understand, appreciate, and even long for as a manuscript heads for publication. A mantra I teach my students is: Every writer needs an editor!
Editing and proof-reading are very particular, essential skills. They are also a potential source of sustaining income for writers. How wonderful that CALA is now offering a diploma.
I’ve challenged my students to take the NY Times test and plan to take it myself in the coming days.