In the Professional Editing Minor, students will learn the responsibilities of the professional editor, including interacting with authors, providing revision suggestions, and learning the grammatical and mechanical requirements of The Chicago Manual of Style. Students will spend all of the first quarter and part of the second quarter mastering grammar and punctuation rules so that they can confidently edit professional documents and provide the reasons for each edit to an author. Most of the second quarter is spent learning about syntactic structures and revision strategies to help authors with stylistic concerns. Students will edit a wide range of documents for diverse audiences, with attention to genre, tone, and style. The final portfolio will include the resume, edited assignments from the course, notes to the author, a magazine assignment, and edited documents from the internship.
What do we do in the editing courses?
We apply the rules of grammar to real documents, determining when rules can or should be broken or tweaked for stylistic or rhetorical purposes (and, of course, fixing those errors that are not issues of style or rhetoric). We learn to analyze documents from a number of perspectives, from the minute to the holistic. We'll edit a range of documents, including advertising copy, technical documents, academic texts, websites, non--‐fiction essays, and fiction. Students will see firsthand how the genre, audience, and purpose affect the type of feedback necessary, as well as the appropriate copyediting marks necessary, for each. Although we will spend a large amount of time working with writing, students do not spend a significant amount of time explicitly working on their own writing. The first and last assignment in the 151 sequence involve student writing, but all the other assignments treat others' writing.
Where will students get internships for this track?
- Local Magazines, including Santa Barbara, Touring and Tasting, Coastlines
- Newspapers, including The Independent, SB Daily Sound, and The Valley Voice
- Local Businesses, such as Citrix Online, Mentor, and Deckers Outdoor
- Local Non--‐Profits, including Direct Relief, Habitat for Humanity, and the SB Zoo
- Law Offices, both private firms and the District Attorney's Office
- Campus Organizations and UCSB Departments
Which courses are recommended for this track?
- Writing 105G (Grammar and Stylistics) --‐ strongly recommended
- Writing 105PS (Writing for Public Speaking)
- Writing 105R (Rhetoric and Writing)
- Writing 107M (Magazine Writing)
- Writing 107J (Journalism and News Writing)
- Writing 107L (Legal Writing)
Who is the director of this track?
Craig Cotich earned his MA in English Literature and a Certificate in Technical Communication at California Polytechnic University, San Luis Obispo. He has been teaching writing courses at UC Santa Barbara for ten years and has taught Grammar and Stylistics, Professional Editing, Writing for Engineers, Business Writing, Research Writing, as well as a range of academic writing courses. Specializing in two areas within the UCSB Writing Program, he is the Co--‐Director of the Editing Minor and the Chair of the ACE sequence (a sequence of courses for first--‐generation, low--‐income college students). Craig has also run his own copywriting and copyediting consulting business for the past ten years, writing and editing for marketing agencies, publishing companies, small businesses, and consulting firms.