From the Accreditation Board
If doing your tax or climbing through mud uphill seem more attractive activities than sitting for three hours displaying your editing skills and having your work assessed by your peers, it may be time to rethink how IPEd’s accreditation exam could benefit you.
Becoming an IPEd Accredited Editor (AE) has many benefits. This can be demonstrated by the number of editors who choose to renew their accreditation every five years, some for the third time now. Here are four benefits of sitting the exam.
Reassure your clients or employer
Many an experienced editor may not have a piece of paper to prove their skills, yet clients and employers need to know that the editor they’ve hired is competent to do the job required. Being accredited by one’s own industry reassures potential clients or employers that an editor can competently apply the standards set out in IPEd’s Standards for editing practice.
Boost your skills
Preparing for and sitting the exam provides high-quality professional development opportunities. It’s never a waste to study such aspects of editing as grammar and spelling, author queries and style sheets, editing a document in Word, or ethical and legal issues such as accessibility and copyright. Plenty of relevant training is provided by IPEd and the Accreditation Board in the months leading up to the exam.
Raise your profile
Being accredited by IPEd gives you a higher profile among IPEd members and other industry professionals. For freelancers, other editors will feel more confident passing on overflow work to you if you are an AE. For those in paid employment, passing the accreditation exam demonstrates to your employer that you have specialised knowledge in your field that you can contribute to the workplace.
Help your editing community
Another advantage of accreditation is being able to contribute to the accreditation program by joining the Accreditation Board or the exam writing, marking or administrative teams. Board members meet once a month to discuss aspects of accreditation such as accessibility, training materials, renewals and exam details. Being involved in the program is a great opportunity to connect with editors from other IPEd branches and give back to the editing profession.
Statistics from past exams show that candidates who attend an exam preparation workshop have a higher chance of passing the exam. Workshops will be available between February and May 2024. There are also sample exams on the IPEd website to download for practice. You could even apply for an IPEd mentorship to have one-to-one training with an experienced editor to boost your confidence.
For those of you who are now persuaded that sitting the IPEd exam may be better than housework or a trek to the top of Mt Everest, the next accreditation exam will be held on Monday 12 August 2024. Registrations will open on Monday 12 February 2024, early bird registrations will close on Sunday 2 June and all registrations will close on Friday 12 July 2024.