This week we were given a piece of text to edit within an hour to test what we have learnt about marking up errors, and following a style guide. I felt confident when I opened the document as the text seemed very short. I soon came to realise that in test conditions I began to over-think my decisions.

I kept in mind the four C’s of copy editing (clarity, consistency, coherency and correctness) while I was checking through the piece. I managed to pick out the obvious spelling mistakes – changing were to was, buckel to buckle and deleting duplicated words. Most of the changes were to coincide with the style guide including double quotation marks to single and spelling out numbers under 100. I was thrown off a little when it came to the last paragraph as there were a number of lists and I wasn’t sure whether to change the punctuation.

I feel confident with how well I did; I only hope that I didn’t over-think my decisions too much.