Why take PTC's Basic Proofreading course?

Lisa de Caux, a recent graduate, shares her thoughts

Changing career can be an unnerving prospect. How can you help reduce the trepidation? For me, market-leading training was absolutely critical.

I was moving to editorial services from a career of more than 10 years as a Chartered Accountant, with an internal audit specialism, in the retail and manufacturing industries. Although proofreading business documents, reports and financial statements had been within my remit over the years, I was new to the publishing industry.

Going into the course, I was aware that it would require a substantial commitment over a number of months. It went through the basic principles in an ordered way, reinforcing the learning with exercises and a marked assignment at the end of each module. While the exercises tested the course information, particularly the BSI symbols, the exercise commentaries gave valuable insights into the thought processes behind the model answers.

As well as online access to the course materials, having the support of the same tutor throughout the course was a real benefit. Marked assignments were returned with comments from my tutor. I dropped my tutor a few emails to clarify particular points and the responses I received were very swift and appropriately detailed so that I was able to improve my learning and add to my own study notes.

I highly recommend this course to anyone who wants a thorough grounding in proofreading; it has given me practical tools to use to my clients’ benefit and has increased my confidence in the service that I provide.

Lisa de Caux was a Chartered Accountant who has made the career change to editorial services. You can find her at www.ldceditorial.co.uk; LinkedIn at https://uk.linkedin.com/in/ldceditorial or Twitter at @lisadecaux.

Lisa successfully completed Basic Proofreading in January 2018 and was awarded a Merit.

UPDATE: Basic Proofreading was replaced with Essential Profreading in December 2019