A Course in Advanced Grammar and Editing

English. Develop your command of the English language with us.

COVID-19 update: arrangement of our courses

We are now delivering courses both online and in-person. Please check the delivery format for each class before you enrol.

Please note that course materials for all classes (excluding prescribed textbooks) are shared electronically within 48 hours of a course starting. Printing is not available.

Advance your grammar and punctuation skills by participating in this short course for writers, editors and business professionals.

In this one-day intensive course, you will practise applying grammatical principles, rules and conventions in various ways, by studying the parts of speech; sentence construction; bulleted lists; the punctuation marks; subject, verb/s and predicate; and the imperatives of writing and editing. This is a supportive and collegial class in which everyone is asked to contribute.

This course is intended to be a follow-on to Deb Doyle’s course in Grammar and Punctuation Fundamentals. You are welcome to enrol in this course whether or not you have completed either or both of those other two courses or any similar course.

Aims

The aims of this course are to:

• help you add value to any document by preventing embarrassing errors from occurring in it
• help you bring any document to an acceptable standard for printing and/or uploading
• empower you in justifying the decisions you make when you are writing or editing.

Outcomes

By the end of this course, you should be able to:

• copy edit a document more confidently
• construct any of the six types of sentence properly
• recognise when more than one grammatical solution is acceptable
• introduce and maintain consistency of editorial style
• determine whether an editorial style choice is mandatory or optional
• appreciate the differences between writing (generating copy) and editing (invisibly mending it)
• prioritise ‘making peace’ with your readers by producing copy that is pleasant, effective, alive, clear and enduring
• avoid ‘making war’ with your readers when you settle for copy that is waffly, ambiguous and ridiculous.

Content

The topics that this course includes are:

• the four ‘registers’ of English: formal, informal, jargon and slang
• the differences between speech and writing
• the nine parts of speech, including an exercise in colour coding them
• subject, verb/s and predicate
• construction of English: phrases, clauses, sentences and paragraphs
• simple, compound and complex sentences
• a pre-homework exercise in writing a 100-word piece, and an in-class exercise in editing and cutting a partner’s piece
• the punctuation marks
• the three ways to set up a bulleted list, including an exercise in reworking a 'hanging list'
• multiple-choice questions about grammar and punctuation
• an exercise in copy editing an excerpt to correct the grammar and make the editorial style consistent
• the importance of editorial stylesheets, including establishing your own generic or customised stylesheet.

Intended audience

Aspiring and practising writers and editors.

Delivery style

This class is delivered as a workshop and includes:

• facilitator supervision of your sentence and paragraph writing and editing
• interactive exercises
• group discussion
• Q&A.

Materials

You will be provided with a course workbook and an explanation of the marks that professional editors use to edit hard and soft copy.

Please bring a blue, red, green and black pen and an A4-size ruled writing pad.

Recommended reading

Deb Doyle, Grey Areas and Gremlins: A grammar and punctuation refresher, fourth edition.

This self-published text-workbook is available for optional purchase ($45) during the class. It is intended to be a reference additional to the material covered during the workshop.