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IPEd

Workshop: Using PDF mark-up effectively

by Paul Anderson

EdNSW ran an online workshop, Using PDF mark-up effectively, in May 2021, in two sessions: a two-and-a-half-hour teaching session on 22 May and a one-hour Q&A on 27 May.

Presenter Kevin O’Brien has 20 years of professional editing experience with various publishing houses. He is currently Managing Editor at Affirm Press in Melbourne. He also teaches on-screen editing and proofreading skills for a range of organisations. These skills would have been evident to participants — this was the third time this year the workshop has been run for IPEd branches and may not be the last. Our event was fully booked with 25 participants.

The workshop was a guided introduction to on-screen PDF mark-up with best-practice tips. Participants were taught how to use the main Comment tools in Adobe Acrobat.

Participants received several documents before the workshop:

  • comparisons between hard-copy and on-screen proofreading
  • keyboard shortcuts for marking-up PDFs in Acrobat
  • what Acrobat DC can do that Acrobat Reader DC can’t.

In the first session, we worked through two sample PDF texts. Exercise one was a prepared piece of marked-up copy; Kevin used the mark-ups to explain the Comment tools. Exercise two was copy to be edited; participants were invited to suggest how they would mark up this text and specify the Comment tool they would use in proofing. Kevin explained the Comment tool he thought best in each case; and, through screen-sharing, demonstrated how he would mark up the copy. The Zoom chat function was used for participants’ interaction with Kevin. This worked well with a high level of engagement.

Kevin’s document, 10 top tips for PDF mark-up, was provided after the first session.

Thank you to all participants for what was a smooth and productive workshop. The feedback provided by those who completed our online survey was all positive.

Dr Sara Kitaoji AE, Susie Pilkington and Julie Ganner AE (first session) assisted behind the scenes. We thank the EdVic professional development team for their work organising and running the initial workshop series this year.

For more information on our workshops, please contact Dr Sara Kitaoji AE, Professional Development Coordinator, at ednsw.profdev@iped-editors.org.