Final
(Portfolio+Presentation)

For your final exam, you will refine your earlier editorial samples and curate a final digital portfolio with your editorial philosophy and samples and scaffolding to help a future client or employer make sense of your work. You will talk us through your choices in a final oral presentation.

Portfolio Components

  1. Editorial Philosophy

    *About 500 words (negotiable—feel free to ask), articulating your approach to editing. Cite sources as would be helpful.

  2. Developmental Edit: Abstract (about 150 words) and work sample
    *Ideally, your abstract for each of these editorial sections should

    -[1-2 sentences?] briefly explain how your approach to [developmental, substantive, and copy] editing connects to your broader editorial philosophy , and then

    -speak to specifics of what you’re demonstrating in the work samples you’ve chosen

  3. Sub Edit: Abstract and work sample

  4. Copy Edit: Abstract and EITHER

    1. work sample(s) — before and after is typical (so ideally, include three items: (a) the original draft; (b) a copy WITH your markup/queries, and (c) a clean copy with all changes accepted (outstanding queries may still be in this copy as needed)

      OR

    2. professional blog post (300-500 words, ish) on copy editing, arguing for how it works and including the following as evidence/demonstrations:

      a) any 1-3 sentences from our class’s copy edited work (i.e., one or more of the pieces we copy edited from Unit 1)

      b) any 1-3 rules from CMS 17

      c) any 1-3 of our sentence diagrams from the gallery

      d) OPTIONAL: anything from the slides on copy edit

*Using these as evidence, discuss the relationships among style guides, grammar “rules,” and actual sentence-level functioning.

Portfolio Format

  • At a minimum, include all of the required components in a single PDF that clearly shows the various sections. (That much will allow for clear reading as I’m grading and as you’re presenting during the final exam period.)

  • For those of you who might actually use this portfolio professionally, consider either creating/adding a section to your current website to showcase your material OR preparing the materials with the web in mind (i.e., making sure your text is copy/pasteable where appropriate, your files are ready to upload or embed as you want them to appear, hyperlinks are present as needed, etc.)—think in terms of who you want to see these materials and in what format to best showcase your work.

Presentation

Plan to briefly present ONE aspect of your portfolio. You’ll have about 5 minutes to stand up, show us your example on-screen, and tell us about what you’ve chosen and why. Presentations will take place during class on Friday, 4/28, and Monday, 5/1.