Professional Editing

In the Professional Editing Minor, students will learn the responsibilities of the professional editor, including interacting with authors, providing revision suggestions, and learning the grammatical and mechanical requirements of The Chicago Manual of Style. 

What do we do in the editing courses?

We apply the rules of grammar to real documents, determining when rules can or should be broken or tweaked for stylistic or rhetorical purposes (and, of course, fixing those errors that are not issues of style or rhetoric). We learn to analyze documents from a number of perspectives, from the minute to the holistic. We'll edit a range of documents, including advertising copy, technical documents, academic texts, websites, non-fiction essays, and fiction. Students will see firsthand how the genre, audience, and purpose affect the type of feedback necessary, as well as the appropriate copyediting marks necessary, for each. Although we will spend a large amount of time working with writing, students do not spend a significant amount of time explicitly working on their own writing. The first and last assignments in the 151 sequence involve student writing, but all the other assignments treat others' writing.

RECOMMENDED PREPARATION COURSES FOR THE PROFESSIONAL EDITING TRACK: 

These are the recommended courses for the Professional Editing track to fulfill the three required prerequisites from the Writing 105AA-ZZ, Writing 107AA-ZZ, or Writing 109AA-ZZ series:

• WRIT 105G: Grammar and Stylistics 

• WRIT 105R: Rhetoric and Writing

• WRIT 107L: Legal Writing

WRIT 151A: COPYEDITING (Winter)

Students will spend all of the first quarter and part of the second quarter mastering grammar and punctuation rules so that they can confidently edit professional documents and provide the reasons for each edit to an author.

WRIT 151B: STYLE AND USAGE (Spring)

Most of the second quarter is spent learning about syntactic structures and revision strategies to help authors with stylistic concerns. Students will edit a wide range of documents for diverse audiences, with attention to genre, tone, and style.

The final portfolio will include the resume, edited assignments from the course, notes to the author, a magazine assignment, and edited documents from the internship.

WRIT 150: INTERNSHIP (Spring) and/or WRIT 162: ADVANCED PUBLIC SPEAKING or WRIT 161: DIGITAL STORY (Spring - depending on which course is offered that year) 

Examples of where students have gotten internships for this track: 

• Local Magazines, including Santa Barbara, Touring and Tasting, Coastlines
• Newspapers, including The Independent, SB Daily Sound, and The Valley Voice
• Local Businesses, such as Citrix Online, Mentor, and Deckers Outdoor
• Local Non-Profits, including Direct Relief, Habitat for Humanity, and the SB Zoo
• Law Offices, both private firms and the District Attorney's Office
• Campus Organizations and UCSB Departments

We recommend expressing your interest to the director(s) of the track or tracks you are interested in. They will know more in depth details regarding their specific track.

Director

• Craig Cotich,  cotich@writing.ucsb.edu