Learn the Skills to Write and Edit
Steadily improve your capacity to write and edit through this learning experience. Undertake writing and editing projects and receive valuable feedback from experienced professional writers.
Grow your awareness of the writing industry. Develop opportunities through networking, and nurture the sort of attitude that often makes a huge difference between successful and unsuccessful writers and editors.
Some writers flounder whereas others are extremely successful
Knowing why some writers fail and making the right career decisions can make all the difference to your future. Success in the publishing industry is not just a matter of being able to do the job. It is also very much dependent upon the attitude you have and the decisions you make.
This course is different to many others, because it goes well beyond just teaching you to write and edit. It is an "experiential based" learning program; designed to get you involved with writers, editors and the publishing industry as you study and build those skills to work better with the written word. The industry is changing faster than ever; and will continue to change; and for ongoing success you need to become "connected" and remain "connected", so that you see and adapt to recent changes, and ongoing changes as your career moves forward.
Modules
Note that each module in the Advanced Certificate in Professional Writing & Editing is a short course in its own right, and may be studied separately.
EDITORS NEED TO BE MASTERS OF COMMUNICATION
Editors work over written words, usually with one main purpose - "to improve the way in which those words communicate between the writer and the reader"
Words are complicated things though. They can have different meanings according to both the ways in which they are combined, and the context in which they are placed.
When you start this course, you may well be aware of the difference between a noun and a verb; or pronoun and adverb; but as you study words and their use in greater depth, you will begin to see not all nouns are the same; and neither are verbs, adverbs or pronouns.
Consider Nouns
Nouns can be split mainly into common and proper nouns.
A common noun describes people, things and places, such as hat, dog, cat, writer, biscuit, city, document.
Whereas a proper noun has two distinct features –
It will usually name a specific item – usually a one of a kind.
It will begin with a capital letter – no matter where it occurs in the sentence.
Examples of proper nouns then would include –
However, there are other types of nouns –
Agent Nouns are usually common nouns (but can also be proper nouns), where the noun takes the form of a subject performing an action (verb). For example – maker (from the verb to make), teacher (from the verb to teach), actor (from the verb to act).
Countable nouns are nouns that take a singular or plural form, and combine with numerals or quantifiers (such as one, two, most, several, every), for example “dog”, “friend”, “nose”, “chair”.
Example of the use of countable nouns:
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A dog, two dogs, three dogs…
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A friend, two friends, three friends…
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There were four chairs in the room
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I can see lots of noses
Uncountable Nouns Uncountable nouns differ from countable nouns in that they only have a singular form, so you cannot add –s to the word to turn it into a plural. You can also not use a/an or a quantifier in front of them. Some examples of uncountable nouns are laughter, furniture, rice and cutlery. To quantify an uncountable noun, you can add a counting word such as a unit of measurement, or a word like “piece”. This generally takes the form “a…… of…….”
Example of the use of uncountable nouns:
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“I eat rice every day”, rather than “I eat a rice every day”
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“put out four sets of cutlery”, rather than “put out four cutleries”
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“I would like to buy some pieces of furniture”, rather than “I would like to buy some furnitures”.
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“there is a lot of laughter” rather than “there is a lot of laughters”
Collective nouns are used to refer to groups, such as
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flight of pigeons
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school of fish
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litter of puppies
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culture of bacteria
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herd of sheep
Concrete nouns are nouns used to refer to physical entities that are tangible and can be perceived by our senses. Such as
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Jane
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apple
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Janet
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fish
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chair
Abstract Nouns refer to ideas and concepts such as – love, hatred, jealousy, justice, peace.
Occasionally they can be both – I stuck my daughter’s art on the fridge. Art is an abstract now, but the production of that “art” can be a concrete noun.
Traditional Editing Work may be Decreasing (eg. in print media); but ...
NEW OPPORTUNITIES are emerging (in electronic media, marketing and digital broadcasting).
There is in fact more work for good writers and editors than ever before; but not in a traditional position with a big company as it may have been in the past. The nature of this industry has changed. The way in which the work is done has changed too; and will most likely continue changing. Writers and editors need to have a new mindset, recognising that this is now an industry for self employment, as freelancers, sub contractors or self publishers.
We Have the Experience to Help You with this
The team at ACS have decades of experience with writing and editing. Our principal has written or contributed to over 150 published books or ebooks. He has been editor for five different magazines; and apart from his role with ACS continues as garden editor for a quarterly magazine called Home Grown (published both in print and electronically). Our staff include more than a two dozen professional writers of books and magazines, many who continue to work in the industry.
We know the publishing industry from the inside and have seen the disruption that the digital revolution and globalisation has caused; and how many well established writers have floundered, while others have adapted and forged a new and successful path for their career.
Let us help you toward a successful future in writing or editing.
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