Dustin Hannum
M/W 11:50-1:05
4 credits
Why take this course?
- You want to learn more about how the intricacies grammar, usage, and style affect meaning and audience understanding.
- You want to be able to implement that understanding to improve your own writing.
- You want to put that understanding to use in a professional setting, including publishing, corporate communications, and collaborative authorship in STEM fields.
Key skills you’ll gain
- Learn the principles of copyediting and put these principles into practice in a number of contexts.
- Improve knowledge of grammar, usage, and style.
- Rethink and better understand the relationship between correctness and style, and develop the judgment to know which to prioritize in specific situations.
- Complete a real-world copyediting project for publication.
Full Course Description
While the term “copyediting” may be associated with journalism or literary fiction, in fact it is a vital component of the publication of almost any textual materials—from scholarly and popular publishing in arts and sciences to corporate and technical communications. So what do copyeditors do? Is copyediting simply about enforcing rules of correctness? When is it okay to break those rules, or to allow others to do so, and what guides such decisions? How do copyeditors understand and negotiate the relationships and interests of readers, writers, and the publications they work for? How has the information age—including the advent of AI—changed the way copyeditors think about and approach textual editing? In this class we will address both the principles and practices of copyediting. Students will learn the principles that guide copyeditors, and then put these principles into use in a workshop setting, practicing copyediting in a variety of contexts, including a real-world project for external stakeholders.