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IPEd expands professional development workshops for editing foundations

4 June 2025 | June 2025, Newsletters

From the Standing Committee on Professional Development 

Whether you are preparing for the IPEd accreditation exam, pushing your development as a new or student editor, or just brushing up on the basics, you will know that some fundamental skills underpin editing work. IPEd has now expanded its professional development (PD) offerings to cover these more thoroughly. 

Many members will have taken Dr Linda Nix AE’s grammar refresher and Cathy Nicoll AE’s copyediting skills workshops. These are being offered again this year, and we’ve now added workshops on the publishing process, referencing, and structured content such as tables. Each of these aligns with the IPEd standards for editing practice, and addresses skills and knowledge tested in the accreditation exam.

We caught up with Linda and Cathy to learn more about their new workshops.

Publishing process workshop – Q&A with Dr Linda Nix AE

How long have you been involved in publishing as an editor?

My honours dissertation in English was an edition of a medieval manuscript, and my PhD in History was on differences in production and layout of specific texts, so you could say I’ve had an academic interest in editing and publishing since about 1989. At a practical level, while a student I had part-time work that involved editing reports, tenders and other technical documents. But my first professional editing role came in 1997, when I was employed as a book editor at a large, multinational publisher of law, tax and business information. Although not every job title I’ve had since then has had the word “editor” in it, every job has involved editing work. So I consider that I’ve been involved in publishing as an editor pretty much my entire career – and editing is always what I come back to.

How involved do you need to be in the wider publishing process?

That depends entirely on context. Personally, I would prefer editors be involved in, and oversee, a publishing project at every stage, but that isn’t always feasible or encouraged. You have a lot more chance to be involved when you are in-house than you do as a freelance editor, and even more when you are in a small organisation than a large organisation that has more siloed departments. I left that multinational publisher in 2000 for a small publisher precisely so I could get a better idea of the publishing process. However, you don’t need to be directly involved or even hands-on with the wider publishing process to be a good editor. What you need is some appreciation of how those publishing processes work – in general and in your specific context – so you can understand where your editorial work sits in the process; the impact of editorial decisions on other aspects such as marketing, budget, scheduling and design; and your responsibilities, accountabilities and potential liabilities.

Who would most benefit from taking this workshop?

Those new to the profession who are still working out that editing involves a lot more than fixing grammar; editors whose focus or role has been narrow and who want (or need) to learn about other types of publications, editing roles or aspects of the publishing process; and editors wanting to sit the accreditation exam (because the activities include exam-style exercises).

In a nutshell, what can participants expect to take away from this workshop?

The literal answer is a comprehensive set of notes with further reading lists and activity solutions, which I will be sending out afterwards. But the notes are to reinforce the above-mentioned appreciation and understandings gained through the discussions and working through the various activities with other editors.

As an editor, what fascinates you most about the publishing process?

My fascination was sparked at university when I first realised that the books we read do not magically arrive as finished publications, but that each book starts as an idea and goes through various iterations before publication, that there are editorial and production decisions that determine the physical form the publication takes (and I include digital publications here), that the process of communication does not stop with publication, and that different physical versions of the same content are read in different ways. After my PhD I decided not to pursue academia because I wanted to be hands-on in that process – hence my move into publishing, where I’ve stayed. I am still fascinated by how ideas become publications, but now my fascination is stimulated by how new technologies and understandings are changing the publishing process and the challenges in working out what needs to change, what needs to stay the same, and what needs to continue but in a modified way, so that we end up with the same result: effective communication of ideas, emotions, facts and so on.

As a longtime editor, what are the most significant recent changes you’ve seen in the publishing process?

There are three changes, which I think of as the good, the bad and the ugly, respectively:

  • the mainstreaming of accessibility requirements, with the flow-on effects of the importance of styles
  • the rise of so-called artificial intelligence, the effects of which will be played out for some time – I’d like to think AI could be harnessed for good, but the more I learn about how people use it and how others want us to use it, the less optimistic I am
  • the devaluing of editors in the publishing process for reasons of efficiency or profit margins, which has been ongoing for some time and is only getting worse.

Anything else you’d like to add?

Yes, I’d like to finish on a more optimistic note. Whatever the changes in the industry and the wider world, humans will always need and want to communicate with each other. Editors have a key role in ensuring that public communications – publications – are clear, meaningful and respectful. Our job titles, tasks and publication formats might change, but the role itself will endure. I think having some understanding of the publishing process helps us not to lose sight of that.

References and structured content workshops – Q&A with Cathy Nicoll AE

How long have you been involved as an editor working on the sort of nonfiction that includes references or structured content?

Most of my academic and working life! My entry into editing was environmental science and reporting, which brought a lot of data presentation and proper citation. I seem to end up in technical writing and editing roles no matter what the job description starts out as.

Who would most benefit from taking these workshops?

Anyone who works with nonfiction is likely to eventually need to edit a table or references. If you are sitting the accreditation exam, then this will help you with the basics so you know what to look out for and where the traps lie. These two workshops are being offered in response to feedback from attendees at the copyediting course I’ve been teaching. The questions became too much to answer in the context of everything else we need to cover on the day. So if you were looking at a copyediting basics course, then this is a useful addition.

In a nutshell, what can participants expect to take away from this workshop?

A better working knowledge of the what, why and how of tables and references.

As an editor, what intrigues you most about working with structured content such as tables?

Tables are just one way of visualising data. If the brief allows, I enjoy looking at information and finding the best way to present it. Is a table the best way or would a list, graph or even an interactive app be better? Otherwise, it is satisfying to have a consistent and well-presented table that doesn’t confuse the poor reader.

And what challenges you most about working with references?

References are challenging. It’s easier now with software like EndNote, but the effort to make sure references are accurate and complete can sometimes be forgotten in an author’s last push to publish.

As a long-time editor, what are the most significant recent changes you’ve seen in these areas?

The main change, of course, is the move to everything being online. Tables sit behind just about everything we see on the internet, but they are deeply unpopular with web managers on the front end. It can be very tedious to make them accessible, and they don’t work well on small screens without significant thought. It means thinking carefully about the audience and how they will access the information. And I’ve already mentioned EndNote for references. That one application has made editing the format of reference lists so much easier.

Core skills workshops now available