For professionals and students alike, the first-ever guide to newspaper copy editing and headline writing.
Everyone in the newsroom agrees that copy editors are the unsung heroes in the business who, until now, have never had a succinct and authoritative guide for on-the-job use. From counting the headline to line breaks, from decks to jumps, from editing numbers and photo captions to editing for organization, The Copy Editing and Headline Handbook is the complete source of essential information for the copy editor. Whether copy editing on a computer or on the printed page, for a newspaper or for a magazine, Barbara Ellis shows how to clean, organize, and proof copy like a pro. With special sections on libel, captions, forbidden words, job hazards, and head counts, as well as a section of the most commonly used symbols in copy editing and proofreading, the Handbook is essential for every copy editor's bookshelf.
Customer Reviews:
Avg. Customer Rating: 3.0 / 5.0
Copy editors may/might quibble but writers will love it:
First: I bow to the professional opinions of earlier reviewers, copy-editors all, I suspect. They found fault (of course; it's what their profession does) with Dr. Ellis' book. I didn't. As a magazine journalist who has frequently struggled to tell a story well, I found her book useful, intelligent, and surprisingly entertaining. Her advice on how to pick a "hot quote" or how to end a hard news story are worth the price of admission.
Get me rewrite:
I realize that anyone who writes a book about editing is practically drawing a bull's-eye on his or her back. (Yes, I know some people disapprove of "his or her" as a way to avoid pronoun disagreement; deal with it.) That said, I don't think it's unreasonable to expect that "a cold-eyed genius of a managing editor" would have his name spelled Carr Van Anda instead of "Carl." Not as bad as misspelling, say, "Webster." Or "AP." But honestly.
Sorry, but I just did not find this helpful either for its... more info
Fine For What It Is:
This book is better than most of the books out there, but that isn't saying a whole lot. Virtues: 1) The book isn't too dogmatic. It recognizes that different copy desks have different policies. The most important style rule of all is that, "If your boss has a rule that's different from the AP rule, your boss is right." 2) Ellis talks a fair amount about the politics of editing. 3) Many of the revised examples are better than the originals. My experience with other copy editing books is that the edited... more info
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