Fall 2007

Course Overview and Goals

This course will introduce you to the basic principles of editing documents for grammar, syntax, organization, professional style, emphasis, and audience awareness. We will focus on the common methods of marking documents using established symbols and conventions as well as electronic methods of editing.

The course is designed to improve your editing and close reading skills while providing you with a basic rhetorical understanding of written documents and communicating in organizational and professional settings. This course will focus on the building of knowledge about the field of editing and its conventions and will also provide you with opportunities to apply what you have learned. The course has the following aims:

• To develop understanding of editing, broadly conceived, and its role in document development, publication, and use.
• To edit effectively, on a range of editing tasks and documents.
• To foster educational practices that demand a consideration of ethics, responsibility, and accountability as a professional.
• To develop productive attitudes and habits.
• To prepare you for your role as a professional and for ongoing learning once the course is complete
• To advocate reader/user needs (audience)
• To copyedit documents using the established symbols and conventions.
• To learn the function of style sheets, style guides, and organizational identity guidelines for documents and how to create and use them.
• To increase mastery of grammar, mechanics, punctuation, and spelling.
• To learn to write concise, articulate abstracts and executive summaries.

  Texts

Required:

Carolyn Rude, Technical Editing, 4th Edition. Allyn and Bacon, 2005.

Dictionary

Thesaurus

Other Recommended Texts

Chicago Manual of Style, 15th Ed.

The Associated Press (AP) Stylebook and Briefing on Media Law. Ed. Norm Goldstein. Cambridge MA: Perseus Publishing,    2002.

Economist Style Guide, 8th . Ed. London: Profile Books, 2004.

MLA Handbook

APA Guide to Style

Projects

For each of the following assignments, I'll start a discussion thread on Blackboard that will include a link to a more complete description of the assignment requirements and evaluation criteria.

Evaluation

Evaluations will reflect how well you have met an assignment's requirements, your use of professional style, tone, and conventions; and your correct use of English. Papers that contain serious grammatical errors (sentence fragments, run-on sentences, comma splices, etc.) cannot receive a grade higher than "C." Other evaluation criteria include the following:

Grade	Criteria
A	Demonstrates a superior analysis of the assignment; excellent attention to the content, organization, design, and style that addresses both the practical and rhetorical requirements of the particular situation. Excellent choice and use of editing concepts, guidelines, and styles. Writing is clear, coherent, fluid, and stylistically appropriate. Has no major mechanical errors, few minor errors. Shows insight, perceptiveness, originality, and thought.
B	Demonstrates thorough, well-organized analysis of the assignment. Shows judgment and skill in the presentation of material appropriate for the situation. Supports ideas well with concrete details. Generally effective use of editing concepts, guidelines, and styles. Written work is interesting, precise, clear, and free of major mechanical errors. Strong, interesting work, although minor problems may be present.
C	Meets all basic requirements of the assignment. Provides a satisfactory analysis of the task. Accomplishes its purpose with adequate content, design, and detail. Uses details, organization, appropriate expression, and acceptable mechanics for the context. Shows understanding of editing concepts, guidelines, and styles, though application may not be consistent throughout document. Nothing remarkably good or bad about the work. Equivalent work could be used in the professional world with minor corrections.
D	Weak in one of the major areas (content appropriate for purpose, organization, style, or mechanics) or offers a routine, inadequate treatment. Application of editing concepts, guidelines, and styles is inadequate or inappropriate. Shows generally substandard work with some redeeming features.
F	Fails to meet one or more of the basic requirements of the assignment. May fail to cover essential points, or may digress to nonessential material. May lack adequate organization and show confusion or misunderstanding of genre or context. May use an inappropriate tone, poor word choice, or awkward sentence structure. May be unclear. Poor application of editing concepts, guidelines, and styles. Contains an unacceptable level of major and minor errors.

Policies & Procedures

Scheduling and Deadlines

Make sure to check the Website and Blackboard to keep current. (The Website is available via Blackboard.)

All the readings are listed on the Schedule.

All projects and activities are due by the due date indicated in the Schedule. If a project cannot be completed on time, contact me before the due date to arrange an extension.

You are responsible for the work due in the course and for class activities and quizzes. If you are not in class for a quiz or graded activity because of a school function or illness, you can make it up before the next class meeting provided you have documentation for missing the class.

If you miss a class, you may want to check with another course participant about any work you missed. Please do not e-mail me and ask if you missed anything "important."

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Formatting, Naming, and Transmitting Projects

The formatting for assignments will vary depending on the documents and editing styles we're working with. However, some general formatting, naming, and transmittal guidelines will apply to most assignments:

1. Format your files with one inch margins (unless the assignment requirements differ)
2. Use legible fonts that are available on multiple platforms such as Times (serif) or Arial (sans-serif) in a readable size such as 11 or 12 point.
3. Save electronic documents as Rich Text Format [rtf] files or, if you're using Word, Word .doc files.
4. Name the files with your last name and the project number. For example, my first project submission would be named "kain_1.rtf" or"kain1.doc." When I return graded assignments electronically, I'll add the word "graded" to the files name (e.g., "kain_1_graded.rft"). Don't use your social security numbers.
5. You have two alternatives for submitting most electronic assignments.
   
   (a) Submit work via the digital drop box in Blackboard. It's very easy. Go to the digital dropbox and follow the instructions to drop and send the file. You can only attach one file at a tiem with this methods, so you may have more than one drop per assignment. If you have software to zip several files into one file, do that and attach your zip file. The drop box delivery is the method I would prefer that you use and it will save you space in you ECU e-mail account.
   
   (b) Alternatively, you may send files as e-mail attachments to my campus e-mail (kaind@ecu.edu). If you e-mail files:
   
   • In the email provide your name and title of project or project number in the subject line.
   • Do NOT send blank email messages.
6. Some activities and assignments require that you mark-up hardcopy. I will collect these in class.

Academic Honesty

In this course, plagiarism and other forms of academic dishonesty will be treated based on the East Carolina University Code of Conduct.

We'll be discussing ethical issues related to editing, citing sources, and acquiring permissions as part of the course. Because this is a graduate level course, I'm assuming that you are all familiar with what constitutes improper uses of sources and copyrighted materials. Sometimes, however, the rules for adequately citing sources and/or the procedures for acquiring permissions are not entirely clear cut. We should discuss any issues as they arise, particularly in terms of the ways in which these areas impact editors and editorial decisions.

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East Carolina University and the Americans with Disabilities Act

East Carolina University seeks to fully comply with the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA).  Students requesting accommodations based on a covered disability must go to the Department for Disability Support Services, Brewster A-114, to verify the disability before any accommodations can occur. The telephone number 252-328-6799.

• In the subject line, include "3870:" followed by the subject of the posting.
• Include your name and email address in all postings.
• When submitting a document via e-mail, attach the file to an email message; do not paste it into the message.
• When submitting a project, include a brief message stating your name and project number.
• Files incorrectly named will be returned.

I try to return e-mails twice a day, late morning and late afternoon. Sometimes I'll respond or send e-mail in the evenings. I don't always respond to e-mails on Saturday. I generally check e-mail on Sunday afternoon.

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