Wikipedia:WikiProject Guild of Copy Editors

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"Make it say what it means and mean what it says" – Wikipedia: How to copy edit

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The month-long November copy editing drive began on Friday, 1 November, at 00:00 UTC, and will end on Saturday, 30 November, at 23:59 UTC. Sign up now!

Welcome to the home page of the WikiProject Guild of Copy Editors (GOCE).

This WikiProject is dedicated to improving the quality of writing in articles on the English Wikipedia. The Guild welcomes new and experienced editors alike to join our project, participate in its activities, and copy edit Wikipedia articles to make them clear, correct, concise, comprehensible, and consistent; to make them say what they mean and mean what they say.

Click this button.

Copy edit an article.

What we do

The Guild of Copy Editors aims to improve Wikipedia by:

eliminating the backlog of articles marked with the {{copy edit}} template (and its cousins: {{copy edit section}}, {{copy edit inline}}, {{awkward}}, {{cleanup tense}}, and {{inappropriate person}})
helping editors to raise the standard of prose in English Wikipedia articles that they wish to nominate for Good Article, A-class or Featured Article status;
maintaining the category of articles needing copy edit.

Current focus

The Guild's members are currently working:

to keep the number of tagged articles trending downwards;
to promptly fulfill special requests
to organize backlog elimination drives to encourage active participation in the Guild, and to reduce the copy edit backlog to a manageable level;
to attract competent copy editors to the Guild and improve our level of expertise.

Joining the Guild

Membership of the Guild of Copy Editors is informal and is not monitored. To be considered a member you can:

add your name to the List of Participants;
add {{User Copy Edit}} to your userpage, which will automatically add you to Category:WikiProject Guild of Copy Editors participants;
join our mailing list to get regular newsletters with information about our activities.

Because of the nature of our project, members who copy edit articles listed on our Requests page should have a high level of skill with English spelling, grammar and punctuation. Requests are often being prepared for promotion to Good Article, A-class or Featured Article status, all of which require prose that is clear, concise, and error-free. Good judgment is often required when deciphering the meaning of confusing passages of text and considering how to best clarify it without altering its meaning. If you're not as confident about your skills, you can gain some copy editing experience by working on articles from the backlog of articles needing copy edit.

New copy editors

If you're new to copy editing and you want some help, you can ask questions on any of the project's coordinators' talk pages. We'll do our best to help you.
Wikipedia's guide to basic copy editing is here.
Our how-to guide has links to exercises and advice for copy editors of all levels.
Advanced copy editing advice and exercises are available at Tony1's copy editing guide.

How you can help

There are 2,478 articles currently in the backlog. You can:

Help improve our oldest backlogged articles (June 2023)
Help improve our most-recently tagged articles (November 2024)
Dive right in and start improving the articles needing copy edit
Select an article from our Requests page to copy edit. Follow the instructions on that page.
Copy edit a random article from our backlog; see these instructions on our Drives page.

Events

The Guild organizes regular monthly events to help us achieve our goals. These are:

Month-long Backlog Elimination Drives, in which Wikipedians earn awards for improving the standard of prose in articles from the backlog;
Themed, week-long Copy-Editing Blitzes, similar to Drives but shorter and more focused.

Drives occur in odd-numbered months, and Blitzes are held during even-numbered months.

Requests

The Guild maintains a Copy Edit Requests Page, where editors can request copy edits on articles they are working to develop and improve, or want to nominate for Good Article, A-class or Featured Article status. We try to complete requests quickly, but waiting times are variable. We do not guarantee that articles we copy edit will be accepted at review.

The Requests page is not for:

Draft articles awaiting review at AFC, in the Draft namespace or in your user space;
Articles that are currently nominated for deletion at AfD;
Articles that are undergoing rapid development, are the venue for edit-wars, or have other major problems that may result in a copy edit being replaced or reverted. Copy edit requests for the above may be declined after discussion. Also note that the GOCE is not Cleanup.

Who coordinates Guild activities?

GOCE's project coordinators are the designated points of contact for issues concerning the project, and are responsible for maintaining the Guild's internal structure and processes. They do not, however, have any authority over article content or editor conduct, or any other special powers.

Lead Coordinator: Dhtwiki (talk)
Coordinators: Miniapolis (talk); Mox Eden (talk); Wracking (talk)

Coordinators emeriti: Baffle gab1978 (talk); Diannaa (talk); Jonesey95 (talk); SMasters (talk); Tdslk (talk); Torchiest (talk)

Progress

A full version of our progress chart can now be found on its own page.

Category:All articles needing copy edit
Started at May 1, 2010 with 8,323 articles. 2,478 left.

5,845 / 8,323 (70%)

Useful links

Here are some links to pages we think you'll find useful for copy editing:

The Manual of Style (MOS). This document defines Wikipedia's "house style". Familiarity with it is essential when editing articles to become Featured Article Candidates (FAC) or Featured List Candidates (FLC).
Wikipedia:Simplified Manual of Style. This is a gentler introduction to Wikipedia's Manual of Style. It covers the most important points of the MOS and has many links to the manual and its sub-pages.
Wikipedia:Basic copyediting. This is a useful beginners' guide to copy editing.
Comma#Uses in English. The most misunderstood punctuation mark explained.

Tools

This section lists some tools you might find useful for your copy editing activities:

Main tool page: https://wikitech.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Toolforge_tools

AutoEd is a user script that helps to automatically clean up articles, and allows for the easy design, use, and customization of user scripts related to automated article cleanup.
reFill – This tool edits bare references and adds elements like titles and dates to bare references.
Checklinks – Edit and repair external links.

Off-wiki sites of interest

Discord – We have a channel on the Wikipedia Discord server for real-time discussion and collaboration with other copyeditors.

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Annual progress chart (2009–2023)
Date	Number of articles	Change from previous year
December 31, 2009	8,002	–
December 31, 2010	5,151	−2,851
December 31, 2011	4,152	−999
December 31, 2012	3,005	−1,147
December 31, 2013	2,922	−83
December 31, 2014	2,198	−724
December 31, 2015	2,019	−179
December 31, 2016	1,626	−393
December 31, 2017	1,194	−432
December 31, 2018	1,112	−82
December 31, 2019	638	−474
December 31, 2020	311	−327
December 31, 2021	1,177	+866
December 31, 2022	1,923	+746
December 31, 2023	2,419	+496

Monthly progress chart (2009–2019)
Date	Number of articles	Change from previous month
December 31, 2009	8,002	+156
January 31, 2010	8,036	+34
February 28, 2010	8,025	−9
March 31, 2010	8,111	+86
April 30, 2010	8,323	+212
May 31, 2010	7,563	−760
June 30, 2010	7,582	+19
July 31, 2010	6,293	−1289
August 31, 2010	6,300	+7
September 30, 2010	5,575	−725
October 31, 2010	5,601	+26
November 30, 2010	4,974	−627
December 31, 2010	5,151	+177
January 31, 2011	4,518	−633
February 28, 2011	4,672	+154
March 31, 2011	3,850	−822
April 30, 2011	4,158	+308
May 31, 2011	3,737	−421
June 30, 2011	3,953	+216
July 31, 2011	3,615	−338
August 31, 2011	3,947	+332
September 30, 2011	3,801	−146
October 31, 2011	4,054	+253
November 30, 2011	3,822	−232
December 31, 2011	4,152	+330
January 31, 2012	3,983	−169
February 29, 2012	4,167	+184
March 31, 2012	3,667	−500
April 30, 2012	3,793	+126
May 31, 2012	2,627	−1166
June 30, 2012	2,805	+178
July 31, 2012	2,306	−499
August 31, 2012	2,653	+347
September 30, 2012	2,341	−312
October 31, 2012	2,791	+450
November 30, 2012	2,690	−101
December 31, 2012	3,005	+315
January 31, 2013	2,894	−111
February 28, 2013	3,124	+230
March 31, 2013	2,835	−289
April 30, 2013	3,061	+226
May 31, 2013	2,484	−577
June 30, 2013	2,723	+239
July 31, 2013	2,817	+94
August 31, 2013	3,186	+369
September 30, 2013	3,152	−34
October 31, 2013	3,104	−48
November 30, 2013	2,631	−473
December 31, 2013	2,922	+291
January 31, 2014	2,777	−145
February 28, 2014	2,915	+138
March 31, 2014	2,902	−13
April 30, 2014	2,987	+85
May 31, 2014	2,236	−751
June 30, 2014	2,400	+164
July 31, 2014	2,199	−201
August 31, 2014	2,411 (est.)	+212
September 30, 2014	2,384	−27
October 31, 2014	2,483	+99
November 30, 2014	1,974	−509
December 31, 2014	2,198	+224
January 31, 2015	2,186	−12
February 28, 2015	2,432	+246
March 31, 2015	2,423	−9
April 30, 2015	2,627	+204
May 31, 2015	2,022	−605
June 30, 2015	2,216	+194
July 31, 2015	2,188	−28
August 31, 2015	2,322	+134
September 30, 2015	2,336	+14
October 31, 2015	2,557	+221
November 30, 2015	1,849	−708
December 31, 2015	2,019	+170
January 31, 2016	1,774	−245
February 29, 2016	1,981	+207
March 31, 2016	1,967	−14
April 30, 2016	2,223	+256
May 31, 2016	1,496	−727
June 30, 2016	1,713	+217
July 31, 2016	1,656	−57
August 31, 2016	1,886	+230
September 30, 2016	1,789	−97
October 31, 2016	1,937	+148
November 30, 2016	1,414	−523
December 31, 2016	1,626	+212
January 31, 2017	1,465	−161
February 28, 2017	1,718	+253
March 31, 2017	1,647	−71
April 30, 2017	1,871	+234
May 31, 2017	1,388	−483
June 30, 2017	1,600	+212
July 31, 2017	1,363	−237
August 31, 2017	1,462	+99
September 30, 2017	1,432	−30
October 31, 2017	1,575	+143
November 30, 2017	997	−578
December 31, 2017	1,194	+197
January 31, 2018	1,141	−53
February 28, 2018	1,325	+184
March 31, 2018	1,239	−86
April 30, 2018	1,449	+210
May 31, 2018	716	−733
June 30, 2018	1,024	+308
July 31, 2018	937	−87
August 31, 2018	1,031	+94
September 30, 2018	969	−62
October 31, 2018	1,244	+275
November 30, 2018	825	−419
December 31, 2018	1,112	+287
January 31, 2019	842	−270
February 28, 2019	1,039	+197
March 31, 2019	811	−228
April 30, 2019	1,011	+200
May 31, 2019	598	−413
June 30, 2019	897	+299
July 31, 2019	585	−312
August 31, 2019	814	+229
September 30, 2019	519	−295
October 31, 2019	684	+165
November 30, 2019	479	−205
December 31, 2019	638	+159

Monthly progress chart
(2020 and later) Edit
Date	Number of articles	Change from previous month
January 31, 2020	323	−315
February 29, 2020	477	+154
March 31, 2020	118	−359
April 30, 2020	365	+247
May 31, 2020	156	−209
June 30, 2020	534	+378
July 31, 2020	255	−279
August 31, 2020	438	+183
September 30, 2020	371	−67
October 31, 2020	548	+117
November 30, 2020	481	−67
December 31, 2020	311	−170
January 31, 2021	52	−259
February 28, 2021	290	+238
March 31, 2021	171	−119
April 30, 2021	537	+366
May 31, 2021	329	−208
June 30, 2021	875	+546
July 31, 2021	598	−277
August 31, 2021	931	+333
September 30, 2021	878	−53
October 31, 2021	1,134	+256
November 30, 2021	946	−188
December 31, 2021	1,177	+231
January 31, 2022	966	−211
February 28, 2022	1,133	+167
March 31, 2022	1,022	−111
April 30, 2022	1,304	+282
May 31, 2022	1,276	−28
June 30, 2022	1,506	+230
July 31, 2022	1,432	−74
August 31, 2022	1,774	+342
September 30, 2022	1,580	−194
October 31, 2022	1,936	+356
November 30, 2022	1,697	−239
December 31, 2022	1,923	+226
January 31, 2023	1,861	−62
February 28, 2023	1,952	+91
March 31, 2023	1,751	−201
April 30, 2023	2,024	+273
May 31, 2023	1,820	−204
June 30, 2023	2,113	+293
July 31, 2023	1,926	−187
August 31, 2023	2,146	+220
September 30, 2023	1,935	−211
October 31, 2023	2,243	+308
November 30, 2023	2,072	−171
December 31, 2023	2,419	+347
January 31, 2024	2,280	−139
February 29, 2024	2,509	+229
March 31, 2024	2,312	−197
April 30, 2024	2,843	+531
May 31, 2024	2,766	−77
June 30, 2024	2,930	+164
July 31, 2024	2,918	−12
August 31, 2024	2,969	+51
September 30, 2024	2,634	−335

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