Hone your dialogue-editing skills

Edit dialogue with confidence

This self-paced short course teaches editors, proofreaders and writers how to punctuate dialogue in a novel according to publishing-industry conventions.

The learning includes a suite of downloadable practice questions and model answers so that you can test what you’ve learned.

Learning outcomes

After completing this course, you'll understand:
  • the relevance of style
  • the concept of the dialogue recipe.

​You'll also know how to use punctuation to:
  • indicate speech
  • express interruptions and cut-offs
  • show pauses and trailing-off speech
  • convey that characters are talking over each other
  • punctuate tagged speech
  • punctuate ‘said’ and other tags
  • punctuate broken-into dialogue
  • work with direct address
  • indicate faltering speech
  • fix comma splices, early stops and false tags
  • assess the suitability of semi-colons in dialogue.

Order now and start learning today

WHAT YOU PAY ...
34.99
+ tax
No time limits on access

The learning process

Video tutorial

Watch the video and prepare for the practice exercises.

Practice exercises

Test what you've learned from the video tutorial.

Model answers

Compare your work with how I tackled the exercises.

Transcript booklet

Download a PDF booklet featuring all of the webinar content.

Resource list

Discover other tools and resources to help you hone your line craft.

Closed captions

Deaf students can access a live transcript of the audiovisual content.

Who is this course suitable for?
​

FICTION BEGINNERS
All beginner fiction line editors, copyeditors and proofreaders.
STYLISTIC IMPROVERS
​Intermediate fiction copyeditors and proofreaders who want to hone stylistic skills.
SPECIALISM SWITCHERS
Experienced non-fiction editors who want to switch to fiction.
SELF-EDITING AUTHORS
​Beginner and emerging novelists who are self-editing a final draft.

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