COMM 353 - ** ROLLED OVER FROM LAST WEEK ** proofreading and "subediting" exercises, and the Track Changes mode in Microsoft Word

PLEASE NOTE: Since half the class was absent Thursday, we couldn't do the exercises I'd planned, we'll do them Tuesday, Feb. 21.

How cool can this be? (Don't answer!) In class today we'll do some editing exercises ...

The purpose of these exercises is to get you familiar with the "Track Changes" mode in Microsoft Word. It's not the best software in the world, but it's the industry standard and the strike-through and underlining conventions it uses (especially if you turn off the @#$%! "balloon" revisions) are very commonly used to indicate deletions and additions respectively (how would you, by the way, edit this sentence that I'm writing right now?). To do the exercises, copy and paste them into a blank Microsoft Word document, double-space it and get into the "Track Changes" mode.

Uff. Oxford comma. Let's try that again: 'To do the exercises, copy and paste them into a blank Microsoft Word document, double-space it, and get into the "Track Changes" mode.' See the tiny red blob I added? It's a red comma, underlined, like you get in Track Changes. I don't claim it's perfect, but it's useful. And Microsoft Word already has it, so there's no extra cost. Worth learning.

The exercises are on a website called Journalism Careers by a British free-lancer named Sean McManus. He's selling a book, and I'm always suspicious of promotional websites, but McManus looks pretty knowledgeable. And his advice strikes me as kosher. From his blurb:

Sean McManus was first published in a computer magazine while at school and now has ten years experience researching, writing and editing for business and consumer publications. He has written for several magazines you've heard of (such as Personal Computer World, Marketing Week and Melody Maker) and plenty you probably haven't (including World Highways, Customer Loyalty Today and Bridge design & engineering).

So here's another guy who's out in the marketplace hustling free-lance gigs, and using the web to promote himself. Doing the kinds of things we have to do in today's economy, in other words.

McManus has journalism, proofreading and subediting exercises (subediting is the British word for what we call copyediting). In class we'll look at the exercises on:

• Broken sentences
  
• proofreading and subediting exercise
  
• Finding the angle

And do some of them.