Published Texts as Material for Editing Classes

Abstract

Newspaper publications and publications on websites are considered as material for course in the elective discipline “Self-Editing”. Studying the text as a whole and its individual components, we focus our attention on editing the heading complex and the main text, analyse compliance with publishing and language standards, emphasise the “pluses”, identify and  correct  the  “minuses”,  identify  typical  errors,  make  suggestions  for  their  elimination,  and  note  the  advantages of the edited versions. We emphasise the great importance of the title in the perception, understanding, and interpretation of the text, the importance of careful selection of titles, as well as the semantic role of each line of the title, the correct division of the title into lines, whether the title is expressive and effective (whether the title line does not end with a preposition or conjunction, an adverb or pronoun, or the particle “not”), whether the clarity of the reader’s perception is not impaired (whether proper names or initials and surnames are given on one line). When analysing the main text of publications, we focus a lot of attention on the sequence of presentation, the correct spelling of hyphens and dashes, the same drawing of quotation marks, the uniformity of presentation of proper names, the use of Roman and Arabic numerals, numerals with increments, writing a number at the beginning of a sentence, after a period (which complicates the perception of the text), the language of presentation, in particular, the elimination of Russianisms, avoiding repetition of words, etc. When working on publications, students have the opportunity to acquire skills in editorial editing of the text. Identifying cases of incorrect spelling, their analysis and providing correct equivalents contribute to the elimination of publishing and language errors and better memorization of normative usage.