Sara Lancaster here. Thanks for visiting the No. 2 Pen blog where I talk all things website content for small businesses. Have a question about your web content? 
10 Tools for a Copy Editor’s Toolkit
Copy editors use a variety of tools to do their jobs effectively. In this post, you will find 10 of the most important. If you have tools you think belong in the copy editors toolkit, let us know in the comments.
1. Notebook
Just because copy editors don’t write entirely NEW content that doesn’t mean copy editors don’t take note of exceptional writing. When coming across copy you love (or copy you hate), jotting down those ideas in a notebook can come in handy later. And what copy editor doesn’t love a Moleskine notebook like this one?
2. Reference books
- Style guides including Associated Press Style Guide and the Chicago Manual of Style
- Dictionary
- Thesaurus
- The classics including Strunk and White’s The Elements of Style
3. Sticky tabs
Mark style guides, dictionaries, and other resources with Post-it Small Flags. This way, you can easily find the pages you reference often.
4. Style sheet
All copy editors must use a style sheet when they copy edit a document, especially a long document such as a manual or a book. This ensures that names, dates, spellings, etc., are consistent. See our Writing Freebies page to download No. 2 Pen’s free style sheet template.
5. Copyediting, the newsletter
Believe it or not, things do change in the world of copyediting. Copyediting is the professional copy editor’s resource for news and changes in the industry.
6. Fun pens
Of course, most copy editing is completed on a computer and not on paper, but that doesn’t mean you won’t need your pens. Check out these fun assorted pens from Pilot.
7. List of traditional editing marks
Check out this list of copyediting marks from the University of Colorado (my alma mater).
8. Math help sheet
Writers are notoriously bad with numbers. It’s a left brain, right brain thing. Copy editors should always double check and triple check the numbers in any text. A simple Google search will turn up great resources like this one: Statistics Every Writer Should Know from Robert Niles, but a book like Working with Numbers and Statistics: A Handbook for Journalists is essential to the copy editor’s tool kit.
9. Dictionaries and style guides for particular industries
Some industries follow their own specific style guides. For example, attorneys follow The Bluebook for consistent citation and the American Medical Association has their own style too.
10. Test your editing knowledge
Just like our pencils, a copy editor’s skills need to be sharp. Many copy editors keep these two links in the “virtual copy editor’s toolkit” to test their copy editing skills from time to time.
- editTeach Dow Jones archived editing tests
- The American Society of Copy Editors online quizzes
P.S. Full disclosure: Some of the links here lead you to Amazon. If you purchase these items, the No. 2 Pen does get a commission.
P.P.S. No. 2 Pen provides professional editing services for clients. If you have a project you need copy edited, contact us today.
The No. 2 Pen is a full-service writing and communications company. Contact us to discuss your writing projects and editing needs.
Leave a Reply