Learning to Sub Edit

2 Days

Course Overview:

This course teaches the basic skills needed for sub-editing and provides a guide to understanding the approaches for differing types of text. It is designed for beginners editing the writing of others, as well as writers’ keen to tighten and improve their copy.

Who the course for:

Everyone who has to check or oversee another’s work, whether it is a report, news story, press release or piece of research.

Objectives & Outcomes

After the training in sub-editing, you will learn extra skills and attract your reader’s interest.

• What a sub-editor needs to look for
• Working to a consistent style
• When to correct and when to rewrite
• Tightening up language
• Grammar and punctuation
• Editing your own copy
• Capturing a reader’s attention
• Cutting copy and making lines

Digital Highlight

• How to write accurate, punchy headlines across platforms
• The problems of editing and proof-reading on screen

Course Content

Module 1:

The essentials of good editing

• The great skill in editing is taking someone’s best effort and improving it – without them noticing that you’ve made changes. We show you the art of “invisible editing”.

Module 2:

Ensuring the grammar, spelling and punctuation are correct

• For most of us, grammar is a dimly remembered thing. But it reflects on your organization if these aspects are wrong. We’ll sort out all those tricky areas that you might not be totally confident about, from starting a sentence with “and” to using apostrophes.

Module 3:

House style
• Every organization should have a style that creates written material in a consistent way. Are you going to write ten or 10, June 10 or 10 June, James’s coat or James’ hat, cafe or café, the NHS is or the NHS is?

Module 4:

Structure and flow

• All too often, writing is merely a series of disconnected sentences. We’ll show you how to structure writing to capture a reader’s attention and keep them reading.

Module 5:

The common mistakes

• There are certain errors that crop up time and time again, from when to use practice and practice, words that are pronounced the same but spelt in different ways and failing to write in a way that’s right for the readership.

Module 6:

Making changes

• There’s an assumption that editing means changing. That’s not true. You need to remember: changes for something better, not something else. We look at when you need to make changes and the areas that consistently cause problems

Module 7:

Capturing a reader’s attention

• With a wealth of online material to hand, readers have become more selective – and they’re reading less. How can you capture and hold their attention from the first few words?

Module 8:

Writing eye-catching headlines
• A dull headline doesn’t encourage me to read further, while interesting play a vital role in encouraging readers to find out more. We show you some of the core things to consider when writing headlines, whether in print or online.

Module 8:

Proof-reading the final version
• Proofreading isn’t merely a matter of checking text against the original. There are more than 20 factors you need to take in to account in a final read b before publication. We show you what these are.

Not for : Experienced sub-editors