The authoring process itself is one of review and revision. The author usually produces a draft that one or more people review and then revise.

Once a draft of any course material has been completed, accompanying illustrations have been drafted and both have been approved by the course committee editor, the Committee Chair sends it to the Editorial Review Committee for editing.

To streamline the process by the Editorial Review Committee, please try and submit the material in the format outlined in the following paragraph.

The material should be in the format in which the material is expected to be published. Remove all editing notes, comments, highlights and ‘track changes’ before submitting the material. All sections and subsections should be numbered. The typeface and size should be consistent; New Roman Times 12 pt. is suggested. Feel free to use different type sizes for paragraphs and headings, but be aware that the Layout Department may change them for sizing and aesthetic reasons.

If the pages are laid out in a similar manner to this manual, your material will pass through the editing process smoothly and in significantly less time.

9.1  Editorial Process

The editorial review will consist of two distinct techniques: substantive editing and mechanical editing.

Substantive editing reviews the material for easy comprehension, appropriate flow of content, good grammar and appropriate writing levels. The goal of substantive editing is to make the text as clear, concise and readable as possible without altering the information given.

Mechanical editing relates to capitalization, spelling, punctuation and the like. It also includes such things as: checking that the Table of Contents matches the text; sections are numbered consecutively; there is consecutive figure numbering; figure references in the text are accurate; section numbers are cross referenced, etc.

Once the final file of any module, or segment of a module, has been produced, it should be reviewed once more by the Author, Committee Chair and finally the Editorial Review Committee to eliminate any errors and ensure a consistently high standard in all CPS-ECP course material.

9.2  Editing Exam Material 

All exams and tests (homework and final exam) must be submitted to the Exam Review Committee. To make their task possible, each question should include the appropriate section number(s) of the course material. Section 4.3 of this guide strongly advises the practice of developing questions as the course material is written. If this procedure is adopted, providing the appropriate section number becomes a simple task.