Progress in Editorial Skills: Copy-Editing and Proofreading

How the course is delivered

The course consists of six x 1.5-hour sessions plus breaks, each a mixture of delivery and interaction using Zoom breakout rooms and other online tools. There will be a 45-minute exercise set to complete between the sessions, and a 45-minute break. The course will run on from 9.30am to 2.00pm on each day.

You will need to activate a free Zoom account to join the course. This takes two minutes and does not require any payment. It is purely for administrative purposes.

Any information to be completed beforehand will be sent via email.

Accessibility

Please contact us at with any accessibility or special requirements, for example having in-session captions or the learning materials sent to you in advance.

If you have any concerns about technical requirements or access please contact us on or telephone (+44) 020 8874 2718.

In-house training

This course is also available for in-company training, either virtually or in person at your office. Course content is tailored to suit your requirements. Group sizes range from five to twelve attendees. To find out more, email or telephone +44 (0)20 8874 2718.

Delegate feedback

“I have benefitted immensely from this course. Caroline was a fantastic, clever and engaging tutor. The smaller group size is well suited for more intensive learning and I felt more confident in sharing my experience and ideas. I have recently 'specialised' in non-fiction, which means encountering more focus on referencing, tables and figures. After this course, I feel fully prepared to meet these challenges head-on and much more confident in my editorial skills. As well as specific knowledge, I have gained many more tools in my general toolkit, such as how to deal with freelancers and author queries. I will wholeheartedly recommend any courses run by Caroline to my colleagues.” Pan Macmillan delegate

“I really enjoyed the course, particularly Caroline Knight's informative and friendly teaching style. She delivered the course at a lovely pace, was clear and instructive in her explanations and made me feel completely at ease when asking questions and going through the homework. A wonderful teacher! As you tend to learn on the job with publishing, you can end up with a few gaps in your knowledge, even after a few years. The course provided an excellent, comprehensive refresher for my existing skills and I have learned other skills which I have never had the chance to develop (e.g. drumming up style sheets for continuity/world-building and characterisation, calculating extent etc). It also gave me great insight into other publishing fields – very interesting stuff, not to mention it could certainly come in handy if I decide to change fields!” Bloomsbury Publishing delegate

“There was a nice blend of different teaching methods (breakout rooms, confidence check quizzes, activities, discussion, presentation, independent exercises) and the tutor was excellent, with an engaging teaching style and attentive to each delegate's context, adapting the course where possible. This was an interesting and productive course. It refreshed my existing editorial knowledge and skills and introduced me to new elements of the publishing process that I wasn't familiar with.” Content Editor, The Chartered College of Teaching

“I enjoyed the course immensely and found it fascinating and helpful. The conversational and interactive teaching style was brilliant, and the content challenging – which is exactly what I had hoped for. I feel more assured in my judgement and decisions, due to the expert feedback. I also have a reinforced understanding of the benefits of a meticulous, methodical approach to editorial work.” Freelance Editor, Badger Learning

“Caroline was excellent at explaining, happy to share her extensive knowledge and presented a really interesting and informative course. Enjoyed the discussions and breakout rooms, and the mix of examples given and how they were presented. Learnt lots from Caroline and my colleagues.” The Open University delegate

"I enjoyed the course immensely. Caroline's anecdotes from her experience in the industry were really valuable, especially from a figure who has such rich experience and wisdom. I am more confident in my skills, have broadened my knowledge in the field, and can immediately implement this in my role.” Law Business Research delegate

“Sarah was excellent. She explained things clearly and I felt comfortable asking questions. I enjoyed the group activities, with the chance to work with the other participants. I now have knowledge of more specialist areas of copyediting and proofreading, and feel confident in checking illustrated layouts and design, and marking up illustrated PDFs.” Bonnier Books UK delegate

“I loved the course. Sarah made the sessions incredibly interactive and interesting. I’ve gained more confidence when copy-editing, and technical workarounds to make life easier.” Editorial Assistant, York Press

About the tutor(s)

The tutors devised and fully updated the course in 2021. One tutor will deliver all three morning sessions of a course. 

In an in-house career that took her to Berlin, London, Oxford and Cambridge, Caroline Drake worked on a wide range of academic books, journals and illustrated trade titles. She was trained at Blackwell and Cambridge University Press, where, as senior subeditor then copy-editorial manager, she in turn trained copy-editors and proofreaders for fifteen years. She updated Butcher’s Copy-editing, with a colleague, for the fourth edition.

Now freelance, Caroline enjoys helping authors to get things right, first time. She has created and taught courses for a variety of clients, including publishers, educational organisations, the CIEP (formerly the SfEP), the reporters of the Scottish Parliament and the Parliamentary Research Service at the House of Commons.

 Since 1999, Sarah Sodhi has proofed, tagged, bound, corrected, edited, managed, commissioned, subbed, scheduled, estimated and produced a great deal of content – from interactive, multi-media resources to marketing leaflets, from monthly magazines to 900-page medical tomes.

Starting her career at a small medical publisher in Oxford, Sarah produced medical textbooks, journals and a bi-monthly magazine. She then moved into the public sector to work for an adult education charity, introducing formal scheduling procedures, progress-chasing systems and detailed budgets. After this, she immersed herself in the education sector, editing and managing digital and print resources for primary, secondary and adult education publishers.

 Caroline Knight began her career in publishing at Penguin Books in 1989, when she joined Editorial 2, the department dedicated to copy-editing. She has been a PTC tutor since 1996 and a freelancer since 2010.

Caroline became managing editor of Allen Lane The Penguin Press in 1995 before moving to Weidenfeld & Nicolson Illustrated in 1997. She lived in Greece, working freelance and tutoring at the PTC, from 2000 to 2003, when she became managing editorial director at William Heinemann, an imprint of the Random House group. Five years later, she moved to Atlantic Books, where she stayed until 2010 when she moved to rural Kent and rejoined the freelance community.

Related courses

The PTC offers virtual classroom courses, self-study distance-learning courses, and a range of e-learning modules. See below for those that complement or build on this course.  

Virtual classroom courses

• Copyright - the basics
• Editorial Project Management  
• The Fundamentals of Public Speaking
• Grammar and punctuation - the basics
• How to mark up PDFs with Adobe Acrobat
• Line-editing workshop
• Working with Authors

Distance-learning courses

• Successful Editorial Freelancing

e-Learning modules

• A commissioning editor’s guide to working with authors
• A copy-editor’s guide to working with authors
• An editor's guide to author queries
• An editor's guide to editing fiction
• An editor's guide to editing illustrations
• An editor's guide to editing references
• An editor's guide to editorial style
• Essential copyright for publishers
• Essential editorial project management
• Proofreading PDFs: A complete guide for editors