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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.

beginning copyediting for fiction

Tips for Editors & Writers

  • Developmental Editing and “Sensing” Problems

    I’ve heard developmental editors talk about “sensing” that a story isn’t working, even going so far to say that “sensing” problems is their job. And sensing that something is going wrong is a useful skill for a developmental editor to have—all of us do, to one degree or another. But developmental editing isn’t about “sensing”…

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  • Editing Quest Novels

    Authors often struggle to create compelling plots. They try to hit plot points (“turning point” “black moment” and so on) but without a solid sense of how structure works, their stories can feel formulaic and lifeless. It helps if you understand story patterns so that you can see where the story might be getting off…

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  • Don’t feel overwhelmed by “competition”

    As freelancers, we have a tendency to think that we’re in competition with all other editors and (especially if you’re active on social media and see how many other editors there are in the world) that can feel overwhelming. But we’re actually not in competition with everyone else who calls themselves an editor. Case in…

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