Genres of Academic Writing:
Professional
Editing—Theory and Practice offers students a rigorous training in
the history, governing assumptions, and established methods of textual
revision, copy editing, proofreading, documentation, and preparation for
publication; an introduction to the work of professional and DYI publication;
and an overview of the current social and cultural status of language and
knowledge workers within commercial and institutional environments. The course
will also address such issues as editing for virtual publications, the business
of editing (acquisitions, contractual negotiations, serial publications,
working with authors on substantial projects, marketing and promotion, distribution),
and in general, the futures of editing.
Texts
Many of these volumes are reference
texts and manuals, but a number also have discussions of methodological and
theoretical issues.
Required
The
Chicago Manual of Style. 16th ed. 2010.
Suggested, or worthy of consulting
Amy Einsohn. The Copyeditor’s Handbook: A Guide to Book
Publishing and Corporate Communications. 2nd ed. 2005.
Lee Marshall. Bookmaking: Editing/Design/Production.
3rd ed. 2004.
Scott Norton. Developmental
Editing.2009.
Carol Fisher
Saller. The Subversive Copy Editor:
Advice from Chicago (Or, How to Negotiate Good Relationships with Your Writers,
Your Colleagues, and Yourself). 2009.
Janice R.
Walker and Todd Taylor. The Columbia
Guide to Online Style. 2nd ed. 2006.
And one
e-source:
JEP: The Journal of Electronic Publishing. Scholarly
Publishing Office of the University of Michigan Library. http://www.journalofelectronicpublishing.org/.
Assignments
In the first third of the semester (6–7
classes), a variety of highly detailed editing assignments will run backwards
through the usual sequence. We will start with proofreading, move on to
copyediting, and then address issues of radical recasting, acquisitions, and
conceiving of and executing new publications. The later portions of the
semester will involve consultations with a substantial number of guest editors
and technical writers, and with visits to the offices of Hawai‘i professional publications
and publishers. In addition to a final comprehensive editing assignment of a
text, installation, or site, students will also conduct an ethnography, or
ideally an autoethnography, of a publishing or writing production environment.
Students will also choose a particular
editing project, or phase of a publishing or writing project, that could
benefit from professional scrutiny and preparation. Possible selections: a
prospectus, a grant, a chapbook, a profession publication, an online
publication, etc. etc. Students will meet with me early in the semester to
determine what would be the most useful result for them, and also what will be
the appropriate stages of development, and what will be the appropriate grounds
for evaluation.
As for my own research and scholarly
activities, I have been editing and co-editing the journal Biography: An Interdisciplinary Quarterly for twenty years, and I’m
the General Editor for the Biography Monograph series. I’ve been a co-producer
of television documentaries and of Aloha Shorts,
a weekly radio program featuring Hawai‘i literature. In both environments,
writing and editing down to the second is a necessary skill. I also served four
years on the Council of Editors of Learned Journals—two years as
vice-president, and two years as president—and serve as a judge for their
annual awards for excellence in scholarly publishing.