Please refer to the following guidelines in your work.
When editing children’s writing:
- Do respect the intellectual independence of the writer.
- Is every word spelled correctly? (where vs we’re)
- Check for capitalization.
When editing older kids’ writing (i.e. junior high and up):
- Do respect the intellectual independence of the writer.
- Check for unnecessary abbreviations, clichés and bland, overused expressions.
- Check for overuse of commas
When editing adults’ writing:
- Do respect the intellectual independence of the writer.
GENERAL STYLE GUIDELINES
- CHECK THE BIO–make sure that
- Any grade level information is actually appropriate (at some point, the system was labeling all adults “Freshman”)
- The Bio and the Entry do not include the same information. If they do, remove the duplicate information from the Bio section.
- Double-space between paragraphs–don’t try to use indenting.
- Use standard punctuation; eliminate multiple exclamation points.
- Use standard spellings for words, not slang abbreviations (i.e. “my fav thing” should be “my favorite thing”).
- Don’t re-word except to correct errors of grammar and syntax.
- Flag any entries that include curse words or vulgarities of any kind.
- When in doubt: DO use the Oxford Comma.
WHEN PROOFING A BOOK DRAFT
- Check the cover, title page, and copyright page thoroughly, word for word. This is when you may discover that the title or author is misspelled. 🙂
- Skim every page for words that jump out at you—chose for choose, pubic for public, loose for lose, etc. It’s not too late to do a complete proofreading if you find an unacceptable number of these on a quick skim.
- Check for straight quotes and straight apostrophes that never got converted to the typographic glyphs.
- Check for double hyphens or spaced single hyphens that were supposed to be converted to en or em dashes.
- Proofread the index thoroughly, verifying every page number and student name are correct.