Created in Fall 2019 for ENGL 6721

Description

A document that has been copyedited and its accompanying stylesheet

Critical Reflection

I experienced an important revelation in this class while working on this project. When I began the TPC program, I was excited to learn that the curriculum includes classes on editing, and I took two of them. In this class, Copyediting, I realized that being a copy editor would not be a good role for me.

Finding errors was completely vexing to me. I was shocked to consider that although I pride myself on my written communications at work, how many have I written with typos that I just did not notice? It was humbling. I am also a lot more forgiving of other peoples' typos, so this class inspired a self-improvement insight - I became a little less judgmental!

An awareness of the kind of errors copyeditors frequently remediate did help me become better at identifying them. I realized that I often read with some sort of mental auto-correct filter that smoothes out some errors. It's an interesting process to consider - why our brains carry right on despite some errors yet get stopped cold by others.

Although I've decided against volunteering or applying for work as a copy editor, copyediting is still an inescapable part of technical communication. I'm grateful for the copyediting strategies I learned in this class because I obviously need all the help I can get! I think my favorite tip is to try reading a document out of order, i.e. read the pages out of order, and even start at the bottom line on each page and then read up. This works by disengaging the part of one's mind that tends to deprioritize errors in favor of comprehension and makes it easier to focus on the text at a more elemental level and spot errors.

Another tip I learned was to create and use stylesheets.² The word "stylesheet" immediately reminds me of the Cascading Stylesheets (CSS) used in web site design. Now I understand where that name came from. In cases where there are multiple options for spelling or formatting a term, copyeditors refer to stylesheets for the definitive way to present a word within the scope of the stylesheet. I realized that when writing for publication, it would be helpful to know if the publisher has a stylesheet. Ultimately, revising a text according to a stylesheet is another important task that copyeditors perform.

As I compose this reflection, hyper-aware of all the errors I might make, Microsoft OneNote is also helpfully bringing errors to my attention.¹ That reminded me that I also wrote a paper on automatic spell-checkers for this class, since they are an ubiquitous aspect of modern copyediting. My research underscored how we discussed spellcheckers in class; they are a powerful, but not omniscient tool.^3,4 Don't rely on them! Now I have more knowledge about how to use them properly, and why different spell-checkers sometimes disagree with each other. (Spell-checker dictionaries have editors, too!)

Overall Satisfaction on a Scale of 1 to 7: 5