Copy Editing Resources

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ACES: CopyDesk.org
The American Copy Editors Society site offers editing tips, contests, quizzes, headline writing exercises, conferences and much, much more.

TheSlot.com
A must-see reference site for copy editors.

CopyEditor.com

AssignmentEditor.com

Thsrs: The Shorter Thesaurus
A great tool for headline writing. This thesaurus gives you synonyms the same length or shorter than the word you enter. This helps if you're stuck on a headline and can't think of a concise word to use on a tight headline count.

Newsthinking.com
An excellent site on newspaper writing and reporting from Bob Baker of the LA Times. The site offers a dynamic e-newsletter on writing, editing and newsroom collaboration.

Editors Weblog

Editing a Web Site: Extending the Levels of Edit
Describes lessons learned by a university editing class when they edited a web site.

Yale's World Wide Web Style Manual
Describes lessons learned by a university editing class when they edited a website.

NewsCoach2
A social network for newsroom trainers, started by Steve Buttry of No Train, No Gain. The site grew from the old Newscoach listserv.

GrammarGuard.org

American Heritage Dictionary

ACES Copy Editing Tests

ACES Iraq Information Page

The Elements of Style

NewsCollege
Loaded with tip sheets and articles, this site features work previously published in "The Write Way," some of which have been updated and revised for NewsCollege. Started in early 2006, the site covers many writing basics, such as tightening copy and eliminating weak quotes.

RegretTheError.com
Blog promotes a book but also offers some classic mistakes in print journalism.

Word Police
Barbara Wallraff, The Atlantic Monthly's copy editing guru, writes a "Word Court" column that offers super advice.

RegrettheError.com
Reports on media corrections, retractions, apologies, clarifications and trends regarding accuracy and honesty in the press. It was launched in October 2004 by Craig Silverman, a freelance journalist and author based in Montreal.

AIM: Accuracy in Media
Explores fairness and balance in news stories. Covers recent issues with blogs and other updates.

Media Standards Trust
An independent, not for profit organization that promotes high standards in news on behalf of the public.

Stinky Journalism
Journalism, online journalism ethics and accuracy blog.

SlipUps.com
Mistakes in movies, books, etc.

Institute for Mid-Career Copy Editors: Grammar Smackdown!
Instructions on how to run a two-round test of your staff's knowledge of punctuation, spelling, grammar, style and, if you want, their ability to content edit. Developed by Ron Hartung of The Tallahassee Democrat and Debbie Gump of Ohio University.

Confusing Words
A database opf more than 3,000 words that get confused with other, or are difficult to understand. It?s great for sorting out small grammar issues, too.

Professor Charles Darling's Grammar Site
Outstanding to use as a quick reference for your grammar questions.

Your Dictionary.com: 100 Most Mispronounced Words

Your Dictionary.com: 100 Most Misspelled Words

SearchSpell.com
Check your spelling as you submit a query.

The Vocabula Review

FreeSpeling.com (with one "l")
A fun little site on how the Web is revolutionizing spelling.

BBC Styleguide
.PDF format.

Economist Style Guide

CJR's Language Corner

Slanguage: Slang Terms
A collection of regional, national and international slang terms.

RhymeZone.com
Packed with useful word search tools, enter whatever related word you can think of and the site will help you find what looking for. You can find words that rhyme, similar spellings, synonyms and antonyms, similar sounding words, match consonants and more.

Poynter.org: Why Copy Editing Matters

Reuters Handbook of Journalism

Poynter.org: Why Reporters Should Sit on the Copy Desk

Copy Editing Web Sites

NY Times Weekly News Quiz
Do you read the newspaper? You better!

Copy Editing Training
A lot of training material for copy editors on our Web site, which also provides information on a summer institute program, funded by the Knight Foundation.

AP Style Exercises Online
Developed by Ron Hartung, writing/editing coach at the Tallahassee Democrat.

Pantheon: Encyclopedia of Myths

Encyclopedia of Television
Simple-to-use site for fact-checking.

Grammar Resources Online
A quick guide to several grammar tools from the University of Chicago's writing program.

AP Stylebook Online
You make the call: A one-year subscription to the online version is $20. You can buy the print copy for $12.50. The site does have some "web-only" content.

Jack Lynch's Guide to Style

The Vocabulary Review (Vocabula.com)

The Writing Center's Online Handouts

Phaster Lookups Reference Database
Do quick searches for reference tools: encylopedias, economic terms, legal dictionary, biblical reference, quotes and more. Great one-stop reference shopping.

Dictionaries on the Web
More than 100 links to dictionaries in 40 languages

Gallery of Misused Quotation Marks
Copy editors are into sites like this.

Slipup.com
Today's Media Bloopers.

Newswriting Cliches

Cliche of the Day

West Egg ClicheFinder Search Engine
More than 3,300 indexed cliches. Look them up and edit them out of stories.

Grammar Girl Quick and Dirty Tips for Better Writing
Tips on writing, punctuation, grammar, usage, etc. Great podcasts where GG answers user-submitted questions.

Guide to Grammar and Writing

PoliticalQuotes.org: Eigen's Political & Historical Quotations
Great for fact-checking. More than 40,000 free quotations from more than 11,000 different historical and political figures in a searchable database.

RhymeZone Shakespeare Search Engine

The Virtual Chase: Checklist for Fact-Checking Web Site Information
A legal research site offers tips on evaluating information quality.

Cornell University: Five Criteria for Evaluating Web Pages

KPlay Reference Tool
This site makes it simple to use different online reference works.

The Canadian Press Stylebook

The New York Times Manual of Style and Libel
You have to register. Then click on store, then books.

EditTeach.org
Resources for journalism instructors at many levels: high school, college, newsroom, etc.

JPROF.com
Resources for college journalism instructors.

JTeacher.com

Avoid Holiday Cliches
From the American Copy Editors Society.

CopyEditorJobs.com

Editing for the Web
Covers design and editing tips, as well as training for web editors and offers pointers on how to make web products work.

My Favorite Word

Techniques for Writing Good Web Documents
An extensive list of specific do's and don'ts, with examples. Many of these tips are familiar to technical communicators but are often news to other writers. Includes a good discussion on when and how to use frames.

Worldwide Words
Michael Quinion writes about international English from a British perspective. Fun with pop culture catch phrases.

RegrettheError.com: 2008 -- The Year in Media Errors and Corrections

CopyBlogger
A great site for copywriting tips. Targeted to marketing/advertising but it also has resources for editorial copy editors.

Sun Microsystem's Style Guide

Forbes Investopedia
Dictionary of business terms, articles, tutorials, calculators and other helpful tools.

Tim Berners-Lee's CERN Style Guide

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This page contains a single entry by SPJ published on January 28, 2010 6:35 PM.

Dictionaries, Encyclopedias, Almanacs, Thesaurus was the previous entry in this blog.

Miscellaneous Job Sites is the next entry in this blog.

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