Core Editing Guide
Broad Basics
General
- Does your production group know each other?
- Grey Matters isn’t just about making a really cool publication, it’s about building teamwork skills and having fun too! Allow your group to do some bonding and get to know each other.
- Are you including your artist every time?
- Does your group have a solid sense of what is expected from each of them in their respective roles?
- Does your group understand the timeline of when things need to get done over the course of the quarter and also on a weekly basis?
- Does your group communicate with each other well?
- Are editors doing their job and making enough edits every week?
- Are your group members learning from their experience?
- When you make edits, does everyone understand why things are being changed? Are they improving their writing and editing skills as they work together?
- We’re all growing at Grey Matters -- Core Editors help to facilitate a lot of this growth!
- Are you comfortable in “putting your foot down” when a requirement such as source validity, structure, and so on are not being followed?
References and Scientific Accuracy
Does the author draw correct conclusions from the scientific literature they’re referencing?Do they cite things when they need to be cited?Do they have enough citations?Are the citations recent enough? Are they credible and peer reviewed (journals with an impact factor of at least 2, preferably more)?Structure
Does the article have a logical flow?Is the information included all necessary? Does each paragraph contribute meaningfully?Are the intro and conclusion easy to understand?The intro should draw you in and the conclusion should leave you satisfied, excited, and/or curious.If it’s broken into sections, do these sections make sense?Grammar
Basic grammar and flow edits (see editing guide if you want more detail).If your editors aren’t catching this stuff, make sure they know what to look for (but if you’re focusing more on content during the first couple weeks then transitioning to grammar later, that’s ok).Fine Details
- When writing about scientific research, spell out numbers less than ten—for example, use “five” instead of “5”—to maintain consistency and readability.
- Avoid using “et al.” entirely; instead, refer to authors by their last name only after they’ve been properly introduced.
- Use the word “significant” exclusively when referring to statistical significance, and include a brief explanation of what that means within the guide to help readers understand its importance.
- When defining jargon that’s essential to the article, give it its own sentence or clause rather than embedding the definition mid-sentence.
- Limit the use of abbreviations, and always spell them out the first time they appear.
- Finally, avoid using the word “causes” unless the study explicitly makes that claim.
