User:Dtgriffith/CEGuideDraft

Copy editing

How to copy edit

Copy editing is to make formatting changes and improvements to an article to make it clear, correct, concise, comprehensible, and consistent, that is: make it say what it means, and mean what it says. In Wikipedia, this is done via the Manual of Style, often referred to as "MoS". The numerous subsidiary pages of MoS are listed in the sidebar on that page. A particularly important subsidiary page is Manual of Style (dates and numbers), often referred to as "MOSNUM".

Useful tags

While we try as far as possible to copy edit articles, this is not always achievable where the text is confusing or in need of content expertise. We are then forced to use a tag to attract such help for the article. Some useful tags are:

{{off-topic}} ~ {{Expand}} ~ {{Expert-verify}} ~ {{Expert-subject}} ~ {{contradict}} ~ {{confusing}} ~ {{refimprove}} ~ {{nofootnotes}} ~ {{notability}} ~ {{original research}} ~ {{crystal}} ~ {{POV}} ~ {{unreferenced}}

See WP:TC for a full list of cleanup template messages.

GOCEreviewed tag

There are occasions when you will encounter an article in the backlog that is unfit for a major copy edit due to other outstanding issues. In those cases, it is recommended that you place the {{GOCEreviewed}} tag at the top of the article's talk page. The purpose is two-fold:

1. To immediately inform other GOCE members that an editor has already reviewed the article, possibly even attempted to start the copy edit, and determined that a major copy edit could not be sufficiently completed at that time.
2. To inform other Wikipedia users that the article tagged with {{copy edit}} has not been neglected, rather, it will be addressed after other clean-up measures have been taken.

The tag {{copy edit}} should not be removed from the article in this case. This is not to be used as an attempt to deny copy edits. You should watch the article and make your copy editing contributions when you feel other clean-up measures have been sufficiently performed.

Removal of copy edit tag

After you have completed a major copy edit on an article marked with the {{copy edit}} tag, you are welcome to remove the tag under one of the following conditions:

• You are confident in your skills and abilities to make this decision on your own.
• You have asked other GOCE members on the project's Talk page to double-check your work and they are satisfied with the results.

If you have conducted a series of edits and determined other clean-up is required before you can finish the process, please consider using the {{GOCEreviewed}} tag and applying other useful clean-up tags as described above. Remember to add a {{GOCE}} tag to the article's Talk page when you have successfully removed the {{copy edit}} tag!

Useful links

• The Manual of Style – Getting familiar with this document is not optional. *grin*
• How to copy-edit