Advanced copy-editing by JOHN LINNEGAR 

ADVANCED COPY-EDITING 

by JOHN LINNEGAR 

Dates: 19 August to 4 September (Tuesdays and Thursdays) 

Time: 18:00 to 21:00 

Course fee: R6 900 full fee: Staff and students: R6 300: Professional Editors’ Guild members R6 300 Maximum: 30 participants 

Platform: Zoom meetings 

This is a follow-on course to the introductory Copy editing and proofreading course. These two courses complement each other, offering as they do what book, journal and magazine publishers consider to be a complete set of knowledge and skills that will enable practitioners to improve writers’ words both competently and confidently. This course will also enable editors to set and apply a uniform standard of proofreading at the various stages of proofs. 

The course sets out to describe and clarify the different aspects of and approaches to editing and proofreading texts. By consensus among the group of attendees during session 1, the majority, but not all, of these topics will be covered during the course, based on those topics prioritised (each participant is given an opportunity to prioritise the topics they wish to cover): 

Author liaison – the relationship question: copy editor–author; copy-editor–publisher; raising AQs 

Briefing service providers generally: principles, basis, briefs 

Quoted matter: treatment of dialogue and direct quotations, conventions 

Copyright and legal problems, including permissions, plagiarism 

Plain English (or plain language): elements and requirements 

Cuts and fills: Why and when they can be necessary 

Artwork captions and labels: inserting, styling, conventions 

Tables: editing and proofreading; converting text to tables 

Glossaries: content and styling 

Bibliographies and references: different types and styles 

Indexes: editing or proofreading. 

 

RECOMMENDED READING 

R Allen How to write Better English (2005) 

GV Carey Mind the Stop: A Brief Guide to Punctuation (1983) 

M Cutts Oxford Guide to Plain English (2013) 

A Einsohn & M Schultz The Copyeditor’s Handbook 4 ed (2019) 

BA Garner Garner’s Modern English Usage (2016) 

J Kahn (ed) The Right Word at the Right Time (1985) 

J Linnegar & K McGillivray Grammar, Punctuation and All That Jazz … (2019) 

J Linnegar & K McGillivray Academic Writing and Editing: Towards Clear, Concise and Coherent Texts (2024) 

N Lukeman The Art of Punctuation (2007) 

J Mackenzie The Editor’s Companion (2011) 

New Hart’s Rules: The Oxford Style Guide (2014) 

New Oxford Dictionary for Writers and Editors (2014) 

E Partridge Usage and Abusage (1999) 

K Van de Poel, WAM Carstens & J Linnegar Text Editing: A Handbook for Students and Practitioners (2022) 

For more information about registration and payment: Bronwyn Geldenhuys: Bronwyn.geldenhuys@uct.ac.za