This creative project presents the first three modules of a proposed fifteen-module textbook on copy editing. The three modules contain college-level instruction and practice in the elements of copy editing, the tools of the profession, basic line editing, and guides for attribution of news sources and the editing of biased news copy. At the end of each module, there are lists of important terms contained in the text and a series of three editing exercises concentrating on subject matter in the text.The creative project also includes an up-to-date examination of modern newspaper technology and how it affects the copy editor. This examination explores video display terminals, optical character recognition and pagination, including examples of how the editing process is conducted in the computer age.

Though much work has been done on the definition of Standard English and on the standardization process, little attention has been paid to the role of copy editors in that process. Editors comprise a class of craft professionals employed to remove errors from texts and make them more consistent, but when editors speak about editors at all, they generally rely on anecdotes rather than hard data about what editors do. Since formal written English is often used as a baseline for determining what is standard, and since corpora of published writing are increasingly used to research questions of usage, it is important to understand the role of copy editors in shaping the text that we see on the printed page. This study examines the usage and grammar changes made by student editorial interns in twenty-three academic journal articles. Volunteer professional editors were then solicited to edit the same articles, and their changes were compared against the interns' changes. The changes were counted and categorized to determine which usage rules can be considered most important to copy editors and thus most essential to distinguishing Standard Edited English from standard unedited writing. It was found that the most frequent changes were several grammatical items and a few lexical items, including the that/which rule, avoidance of towards, increased parallelism, and standardization of s-genitive forms. These changes confirm the idea that editors play a role in standardization, particularly codifying certain forms by reducing optional variation. From this data we can conclude that educated written usage and edited usage are not necessarily the same and should not be conflated. These findings also have implications for the use of corpus data in usage studies by showing that the final version of a printed work does not necessarily show the usage of edited writers but likely has a substantial contribution from copy editors.

Este trabalho estuda o campo da edição de texto na produção editorial de livros no Brasil. O objetivo é apontar algumas distinções necessárias às pesquisas acadêmicas sobre edição de textos, e importantes para a formação de pesquisadores e profissionais. A proposta centra-se nas principais etapas (edição de texto, preparação de originais e revisão de provas) que compõem o processo por que passa um texto a ser transformado em livro. Parte-se de análise dos manuais de editoração e de pesquisas acadêmicas que tangenciam o tema. E articula-se um diálogo entre alguns trabalhos acadêmicos das áreas de psicolinguística e psicologia cognitiva sobre leitura em suas relações possíveis com os estudos em editoração e a experiência empírica dos editores de texto. Contribui-se, assim, para o aprimoramento dos conhecimentos sobre a edição de texto, entre eles: as etapas, os objetivos principais e secundários, as estratégias, as tarefas e um conjunto de elementos necessários para que um profissional atue como editor de texto consciente de sua intervenção. / It is the purpose of this thesis to study the field of text-editing in the Brazilian book publishing industry. Its main aim is to point out a few distinctions deemed necessary not only to the academic research but also to the formation of researchers and professionals in this particular field of study and work. In order to achieve this goal, the main phases the text goes through on its way to becoming a book -- text-editing, copy-editing and proofreading -- are here taken into account and characterized. Examining the available manuals and academic papers on the book editing field is the starting point of this research. It then goes on to promoting a dialogue between the book editing field and other areas of expertise, such as psycholinguistics and cognitive psychology, that also deal with the process of reading. The possible relationships this dialogue reveals and the actual praxis of text editing are then analyzed. Contributing to a better knowledge of what text-editing actually involves is therefore a primary aim of this thesis. It intends to shed some light on the specific phases, primary and secondary goals and strategies text-editing comprises, as well as on a series of elements needed not only for the praxis of text-editing itself but also for a more conscientious practice of this activity.

Este trabalho estuda o campo da edição de texto na produção editorial de livros no Brasil. O objetivo é apontar algumas distinções necessárias às pesquisas acadêmicas sobre edição de textos, e importantes para a formação de pesquisadores e profissionais. A proposta centra-se nas principais etapas (edição de texto, preparação de originais e revisão de provas) que compõem o processo por que passa um texto a ser transformado em livro. Parte-se de análise dos manuais de editoração e de pesquisas acadêmicas que tangenciam o tema. E articula-se um diálogo entre alguns trabalhos acadêmicos das áreas de psicolinguística e psicologia cognitiva sobre leitura em suas relações possíveis com os estudos em editoração e a experiência empírica dos editores de texto. Contribui-se, assim, para o aprimoramento dos conhecimentos sobre a edição de texto, entre eles: as etapas, os objetivos principais e secundários, as estratégias, as tarefas e um conjunto de elementos necessários para que um profissional atue como editor de texto consciente de sua intervenção. / It is the purpose of this thesis to study the field of text-editing in the Brazilian book publishing industry. Its main aim is to point out a few distinctions deemed necessary not only to the academic research but also to the formation of researchers and professionals in this particular field of study and work. In order to achieve this goal, the main phases the text goes through on its way to becoming a book -- text-editing, copy-editing and proofreading -- are here taken into account and characterized. Examining the available manuals and academic papers on the book editing field is the starting point of this research. It then goes on to promoting a dialogue between the book editing field and other areas of expertise, such as psycholinguistics and cognitive psychology, that also deal with the process of reading. The possible relationships this dialogue reveals and the actual praxis of text editing are then analyzed. Contributing to a better knowledge of what text-editing actually involves is therefore a primary aim of this thesis. It intends to shed some light on the specific phases, primary and secondary goals and strategies text-editing comprises, as well as on a series of elements needed not only for the praxis of text-editing itself but also for a more conscientious practice of this activity.