Tools to check your grammar and spelling, or other writing issues if you can’t find an editor:

Formatting and Modalities

Inverted pyramid in comprehensive formby Christopher Schwartz is licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/)

  • Overall structure
  • Headings
  • Chapters and subheadings in PressBooks
  • Modalities (i.e., how will it look when it is printed? on the phone? on a tablet?)

As copy editors, we look at heading consistency and whether the heading levels are consistent.

When we look at the overall structure, we consider the following:

  • Does each section have a heading? An introduction?
  • Are there Learning Outcomes, Key Terms, and References in each section?
  • Are these education-themed textboxes [footnote]You can find more information about KTs, LOs or EXs here: https://guide.pressbooks.com/chapter/appearance/[/footnote] organized in the same order for each section so that students know where to find these in each section?
  • Does each image have a caption?
  • Are all the captions consistently formatted and
  • accurate?
  • Are there mathematical equations included? What format is used? (See Mathjax in Pressbooks.)
  • What is the overall academic formatting style for the work? APA? MLA? Chicago/ Turabian?
  • Open wall of text? Overuse of bullets? Should bullets be used instead?
  • Are there glossary terms in each chapter?

We also reference the  BCcampus Open Education Self-Publishing Guide and the Pressbooks User Guide as some of these decisions have already been made.

Outlines, Chapters, and Sub-Chapter Headings – Organization tab.

makes it very easy to move your chapters in the sequence if you need to during the copy editing phase. For example, if you decide that you’d like to have a little dessert before you have the main course as a way to engage the reader. For online readers, think of an inverted triangle, with the bulk of your important information at the beginning of the chapter, paragraph, or sentence. If the reader is unsure or does not care about what you’ve started with, they won’t care enough to finish.

On that note, ensure your information is broken down or organized into bite-sized chunks. That’s not to say that everything has to be in paragraphs that are 140 characters or less, but brevity is helpful.

Ohio State University has a great description and explanation for using the inverted triangle method in your writing in their Writing for Strategic Communication Industries OER in Pressbooks but, essentially, it works very well for online content.

 Glossary terms

You can create both individual glossary terms or a full glossary list for your book.

Glossary terms are underlined in your Pressbooks webbook, and display the term definition in a tooltip when clicked.

An activated tooltip in a Pressbooks webbook.

To see how, refer to the Pressbooks User Guide section 12. Glossaries.

Adapted from:

Icon for the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License

Pressbooks User Guide by Book Oven Inc. (Pressbooks.com) is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, except where otherwise noted.