You might be a copy editor if . . .
Our upcoming Beginning Copyediting for Fiction class will educate anyone wanting to fix the errors seen on a daily basis in the real world!
Over the past week or so, I’ve caught the following typos and grammatical awkwardness in major news media:
USA Today: “publically released”
USA Today: “could cause driver’s to crash”
USA Today: “exasperating the problem” (should be “exacerbating the problem”)
Yahoo Entertainment: “Affleck has three children with whom Lopez has become the stepmother to.”
People: “A college student is dead after falling to his death.”
CNN: “Crossed first paths”
ABC News: “preventing recruiters from meting with students”
If you, like me, have a tendency to spot errors like this, then you, too, are either a copy editor or could be one.

Tips for Editors & Writers
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Building Confidence in Your Editing Career
A few years ago, two students started taking classes at Club Ed. Both had solid backgrounds that helped them quickly grasp the principles of developmental editing – one had a teaching background and the other had a journalism background. One of these students recently celebrated their first $10,000 month. The other student got bogged down…
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Helping Authors Strengthen Story Settings
The setting of a novel consists of multiple elements, big and small, that nest inside each other like those little Russian dolls. We might show this hierarchy of settings like so: If you think about it, the micro setting of “the living room of 601 San Mateo Road Apartment 16” implies the existence of all…
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World-building Without Info-Dumping
World-building is often seen as the province of science fiction and fantasy writers who have to convey new-to-us settings and cultures, and occasionally by historical writers who have to convey the feel of an era that a reader may not know much about. But every story takes place somewhere. Even stories set in a contemporary…
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New to story editing? Begin at the beginning.



