A professional organization of copyeditors (mostly those who work for news organizations), dedicated to improving the quality of journalism and the working lives of journalists. Its stated purpose is "to educate our members--and others in the news business--in ways of improving the standards of copy editing and increasing the value the news industry places on our craft."
The Bay Area Editors' Forum is an association of in-house and freelance editors from a variety of publishing and publications settings, based in the San Francisco Bay Area. It acts as a job clearinghouse, and provides useful documents that describe what editors do.
A nationwide association for editors working in Canada. From its Web site: "We can put you in touch with 1,800 other editors across the country, offer you discounts on training opportunities and resources, help you connect with clients and employers, and give you opportunities to develop your skills." It offers a full certification in copyediting and proofreading.
The Web site of this New York-based organization, which merged in 2000 with the Freelance Editorial Association, includes job listings and fee guidelines for freelancers.
Free online dictionary and thesaurus. The site licenses Random House Webster's Unabridged Dictionary and The American Heritage Dictionary, 4th edition.
A searchable database of entries in Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary, 10th edition. For the current (11th) edition, you must pay for a subscription. Search a thesaurus, a Spanish-English dictionary, and a medical dictionary here, too.
A newsletter about The Oxford English Dictionary. Access to the online edition of the dictionary itself, which includes updates from the 3rd edition as it is being compiled, is by subscription only. Check your local library to see whether it has access.
A new site currently in development, offering a mix of traditional definitions (from The American Heritage Dictionary, 4th edition), examples culled from the Web, and a wiki.
Links to more than 500 dictionaries in more than 140 languages. The site licenses Webster's New World dictionary, and is a good source of special-subject lexicons.
Online Manuals and Guides to Style and Grammar
Official sites of well-known resources, plus some less famous favorites
The 10th edition of the chief resource for medical editors, The AMA Manual of Style: A Guide for Authors and Editors, is available online by subscription.
The Associated Press Stylebook is available online by subscription. Subscribers receive e-mails when the style is updated, and can customize the Stylebook to create their own online style manual.
Questions and answers about the most widely used style manual in North America. The Q & A archive is also integrated into The Chicago Manual of Style Online, available only to subscribers.
Advice on grammar and style from Jack Lynch, Associate Professor of English at Rutgers University. The advice leans toward the cautious (see the entry on split infinitives), but the explanations are straightforward and easy to understand.
The Gregg Reference Manual contains advice for business writers and a helpful glossary of grammatical terms. The 10th edition is available online by subscription.
The blog begun by Bill Walsh, national desk copy chief at The Washington Post, back before the rest of us knew what a blog was. Walsh is the author of The Elephants of Style and Lapsing into a Comma.
University of California, San Diego - Extension offers a copyediting certificate program that can be completed online in 12 to 15 months of part-time study.
Societies
Societies dedicated to subjects of interest to language lovers
Founded in 1889, the American Dialect Society is dedicated to the study of the English language in North America, and of other languages, or dialects of other languages, influencing it or influenced by it.
The Dictionary Society of North America was formed in 1975 to bring together people interested in dictionary making, study, collection, and use. Its more than 400 members who live in 40 countries around the world include people working on dictionaries, academics who engage in research and writing about dictionaries, dictionary collectors, librarians, booksellers, translators, linguists, publishers, writers, collectors, journalists, and people with an avocational interest in dictionaries.
SPELL is a nonprofit membership organization dedicated to the preservation of the English language. SPELL members receive the bimonthly newsletter SPELL/Binder.
