This Autumn Quarter, Dr. Tim Elliott will be teaching WRD 323 Editing, a course for undergraduates to hone not just their editing skills but also their ability to communicate with the writers they’re editing for. I checked in with Dr. Elliott to better understand what WRD 323 Editing is about and what students can expect. Read on to see Dr. Elliott’s insightful responses.
What are your goals for the course and what can students hope to learn?
My goals are to help students prepare to edit most kinds of professional documents and become comfortable building rapport with authors. Students will use a mix of regular exercises and projects to learn to edit for style and consistency at the document, paragraph, and sentence levels. After this class, students will have both editing experience and edited artifacts to begin their career as professional editors.
What sparked your interest in teaching this subject?
I really enjoyed teaching the graduate editing course and thought an undergraduate version would be beneficial for our majors, minors, and folks throughout the college. Editing is a writing-focused skill that travels well from career to career and workplace to workplace. Editing can help students get started in writing-based jobs and internships.
How is the course structured?
The course focuses on the basics of workplace editing, discusses typical workplace practices and expectations, and provides chances to practice corresponding with clients and edit a variety of professional writing genres. I talk more about this in the project section, but you start out editing peers’ work and end the class editing materials for a community partner.
What major projects will be assigned to students?
This class starts with editing a classmate’s work and then focuses on job search materials for a family member or friend. The third project involves editing a short academic manuscript, while the final project invites students to edit a community partners’ documentation—everything from grant proposals to social media posts.
During the course final period, students will give a short, casual presentation to the client discussing their documents and edits. Along the way, we’ll do plenty of editing exercises and activities to help everyone hone their approach to editing and communicating their editing choices to authors.
Who should take this course and why?
Editing is a universal skill that writing-focused folks should learn because it can help them get jobs, internships, and promotions. It will also improve your own writing, because editing involves building a rapport with writers and understanding writing on a deeper level, everything from fundamentals to style. If you’ve ever tutored, looked over a friend’s paper, or peer-reviewed, you’ve been practicing some of the crucial elements of editing. This course will allow you to edit a variety of different writing genres for different audiences and, eventually, edit content for a community partner.
What final thoughts do you want to leave potential students with?
This has been one of my favorite courses to teach at DePaul, and I’m excited to share my expertise. The course is very interactive and allows me to learn from my students, too, as we look at current job ads and trends. If you’re at all interested in writing in corporate or non-profit settings, consider taking this class.
_____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
With course carts now open on Campus Connect and enrollment period about to begin, add WRD 323 to your list and learn not only the theoretical underpinnings of editing writing, but also the practical skills you’ll take with you across writing contexts and settings.