The Developmental Editing Field Guide
The Developmental Editing Field Guide is for anyone, new or experienced, who wants to learn or improve developmental editing skills. The Field Guide is a summary consolidation of materials developed by Ana Mourant and Amelia Sheldon.
This Field Guide is not a substitute for professional training. Instead, the Guide is intended to be a brief but thorough road map to developmental editing. The Guide gives career guidance, suggests professional training programs, and provides resources for learning developmental editing skills and tools. Examples of common documents used in developmental editing are provided, along with suggested best practices and a sample exercise with sample answers.
To download the complete Developmental Editing Field Guide (zipped folder) click this link:
📁The Developmental Editing Field Guide (zipped folder)
To download just individual elements, click on the desired document below:
For career guidance on how to become a developmental editor, or for a list of courses on developmental editing, see “Resources for Developmental Editing.”
For developmental editing procedure, see “Developmental Editing Procedure One-Sheet.”
For a practice developmental editing exercise, see “Developmental Edit In-Manuscript Comments Exercise.” After completing the exercise, see the answer key “Developmental Edit In-Manuscript Comments Example Answers.”
For a list of resources such as books, software, and organizations to join, see “Resources for Developmental Editing.”
List of Documents:
📁The Complete Developmental Editing Field Guide
(zipped folder—includes all documents listed below)
📄Cover Letter - Editorial Proposal
📄Developmental Edit In-Manuscript Comments Example Answers
📄Developmental Edit In-Manuscript Comments Exercise
📄Developmental Edit Write-Up Example
📄Developmental Editing Manuscript Checklist
📄Developmental Editing Procedure One-Sheet
📄Editorial Letter with Action Items
📄Resources for Developmental Editing
Ana Mourant is a graduate of the University of Washington Certificate in Editing program, which is a year-long graduate-level program, and the University of Washington Specialization in Developmental Editing program, which is a three-month post-editing-certificate program. She would like to thank the University of Washington and her former professors for the invaluable editing education that allowed the creation of this guide. Ana would also like to thank the practical experience and coaching of her editing mentor Sandra Wendel as well as literary agent Amelia Sheldon for sponsoring this project.
