Due to sickness, I was unfortunately unable to attend the lesson with Jess today. I decided to focus my time on practice documents for our copyediting test in the next lesson. I also practiced on the documents that were used in the lesson which Jess posted on Blackboard.

Although I was already familiar with using the Track Changes tool on Microsoft Word, I found that through practicing this week it became almost second nature. It seems that areas that I was unsure of initially, I can confidently decide whether to amend or query to the author.

I am still hesitant when it comes to em/en dashes and colons/semi-colons – when to change them and when they can remain as they are. A lot of it seems to come down to personal preference of the writer so it could be a case of following consistency through the text.

With the Bloomsbury Style guide at hand, though, it is much easier to make decisions. I found that I was increasingly remembering parts of the style guide so referring to it less frequently. I know now to write out numbers up to 100 and to correct double quotations for single, which makes the process much quicker. Since beginning this module I feel that my skills in copyediting and my knowledge of grammar has become much better.