The Tartan’s Copy Editing Home

by Greg Hanneman, 2006 copy manager



 

News & Notes

Copy schedule:

January 22, 2007: click here

Old schedules:

Fall 2006
Spring 2006

Things to watch out for this week:

Fact-checking!

Edit early for things like sweeping generalizations ("the typical self-absobed movie star") or ("most Carnegie Mellon students"); if you can't fix an article yourself, send it back to the section editor.

Recent updates or other issues:

This is our last issue of the semester! Hope everyone enjoys it!

E-mail me if you have any input on the time, location, or nature of the fall semester copy party. It will be sometime during reading days or final exams.

Payroll:

List of weeks worked for the spring, through January 1, 2007.
The old list for the fall, through December 4.
The even older list for spring 2006, through April 24 (missing May 1).

 

General Reference

The Tartan Style Manual, 2005 Edition — Every writer at The Tartan should be familiar with at least part of this document; having a paper-wide style is only useful if we all follow it. The guide, updated yearly by the copy manager, is the authoritative source for how words should look in print.

Spring 2006 Copy Workshop — This document contains the minutes from a presentation on copy editing I made to staffwriters in February 2006. It includes all the example sentences from the PowerPoint, plus the the style points brought out by the Q-and-A at the end.

Writing for Your Copy Editors — Here is a short presentation that Arthur put together for another writers' meeting in 2004. If you don't feel up to tackling the whole style guide yet, you could start here.

How to Copy Edit for The Tartan — Another of Arthur's presentations, this document is more complete than the one aimed at staffwriters. Here you'll find a condensed version of the style guide, plus a few additional notes about general copy procedure. Please note that, effective December 2005, the section about Pillbox is out of date. Updated information should appear soon.

 

Fun Stuff!

Comics: Important Issues | Verbing | Bob's Guide to the Apostrophe | Destroy the Apostrophe!

Front-Page Gaffes, an old message board thread from the innumerable forums at VisualEditors.com.

The Slot, a site all about copy editing by Washington Post copy chief Bill Walsh.

Printer's Error, a poem by P.G. Wodehouse.

Language Log, an online journal, updated several times daily, maintained by a group of linguists at Penn. Its sidebar includes a gigantic list of other language-related blogs out there.