Wikipedia:WikiProject Guild of Copy Editors/Left panel

Welcome to the home page of the WikiProject Guild of Copy Editors (GOCE).

This WikiProject is dedicated to improving the quality of writing in articles on the English Wikipedia. The Guild welcomes new and experienced editors alike to join our project, participate in its activities, and copy edit Wikipedia articles to make them clear, correct, concise, comprehensible, and consistent; to make them say what they mean and mean what they say.

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Copy edit an article.

What we do

The Guild of Copy Editors aims to improve Wikipedia by:

eliminating the backlog of articles marked with the {{copy edit}} template (and its cousins: {{copy edit section}}, {{copy edit inline}}, {{awkward}}, {{cleanup tense}}, and {{inappropriate person}})
helping editors to raise the standard of prose in English Wikipedia articles that they wish to nominate for Good Article, A-class or Featured Article status;
maintaining the category of articles needing copy edit.

Current focus

The Guild's members are currently working:

to keep the number of tagged articles trending downwards;
to promptly fulfill special requests
to organize backlog elimination drives to encourage active participation in the Guild, and to reduce the copy edit backlog to a manageable level;
to attract competent copy editors to the Guild and improve our level of expertise.

Joining the Guild

Membership of the Guild of Copy Editors is informal and is not monitored. To be considered a member you can:

add your name to the List of Participants;
add {{User Copy Edit}} to your userpage, which will automatically add you to Category:WikiProject Guild of Copy Editors participants;
join our mailing list to get regular newsletters with information about our activities.

Because of the nature of our project, members who copy edit articles listed on our Requests page should have a high level of skill with English spelling, grammar and punctuation. Requests are often being prepared for promotion to Good Article, A-class or Featured Article status, all of which require prose that is clear, concise, and error-free. Good judgment is often required when deciphering the meaning of confusing passages of text and considering how to best clarify it without altering its meaning. If you're not as confident about your skills, you can gain some copy editing experience by working on articles from the backlog of articles needing copy edit.

New copy editors

If you're new to copy editing and you want some help, you can ask questions on any of the project's coordinators' talk pages. We'll do our best to help you.
Wikipedia's guide to basic copy editing is here.
Our how-to guide has links to exercises and advice for copy editors of all levels.
Advanced copy editing advice and exercises are available at Tony1's copy editing guide.

How you can help

There are 2,418 articles currently in the backlog. You can:

Help improve our oldest backlogged articles (July 2023)
Help improve our most-recently tagged articles (November 2024)
Dive right in and start improving the articles needing copy edit
Select an article from our Requests page to copy edit. Follow the instructions on that page.
Copy edit a random article from our backlog; see these instructions on our Drives page.

Events

The Guild organizes regular monthly events to help us achieve our goals. These are:

Month-long Backlog Elimination Drives, in which Wikipedians earn awards for improving the standard of prose in articles from the backlog;
Themed, week-long Copy-Editing Blitzes, similar to Drives but shorter and more focused.

Drives occur in odd-numbered months, and Blitzes are held during even-numbered months.

Requests

The Guild maintains a Copy Edit Requests Page, where editors can request copy edits on articles they are working to develop and improve, or want to nominate for Good Article, A-class or Featured Article status. We try to complete requests quickly, but waiting times are variable. We do not guarantee that articles we copy edit will be accepted at review.

The Requests page is not for:

Draft articles awaiting review at AFC, in the Draft namespace or in your user space;
Articles that are currently nominated for deletion at AfD;
Articles that are undergoing rapid development, are the venue for edit-wars, or have other major problems that may result in a copy edit being replaced or reverted. Copy edit requests for the above may be declined after discussion. Also note that the GOCE is not Cleanup.

Who coordinates Guild activities?

GOCE's project coordinators are the designated points of contact for issues concerning the project, and are responsible for maintaining the Guild's internal structure and processes. They do not, however, have any authority over article content or editor conduct, or any other special powers.

Lead Coordinator: Dhtwiki (talk)
Coordinators: Miniapolis (talk); Mox Eden (talk); Wracking (talk)

Coordinators emeriti: Baffle gab1978 (talk); Diannaa (talk); Jonesey95 (talk); SMasters (talk); Tdslk (talk); Torchiest (talk)

Progress

A full version of our progress chart can now be found on its own page.

Category:All articles needing copy edit
Started at May 1, 2010 with 8,323 articles. 2,418 left.

5,905 / 8,323 (71%)

Useful links

Here are some links to pages we think you'll find useful for copy editing:

The Manual of Style (MOS). This document defines Wikipedia's "house style". Familiarity with it is essential when editing articles to become Featured Article Candidates (FAC) or Featured List Candidates (FLC).
Wikipedia:Simplified Manual of Style. This is a gentler introduction to Wikipedia's Manual of Style. It covers the most important points of the MOS and has many links to the manual and its sub-pages.
Wikipedia:Basic copyediting. This is a useful beginners' guide to copy editing.
Comma#Uses in English. The most misunderstood punctuation mark explained.

Tools

This section lists some tools you might find useful for your copy editing activities:

Main tool page: https://wikitech.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Toolforge_tools

AutoEd is a user script that helps to automatically clean up articles, and allows for the easy design, use, and customization of user scripts related to automated article cleanup.
reFill – This tool edits bare references and adds elements like titles and dates to bare references.
Checklinks – Edit and repair external links.

Off-wiki sites of interest

Discord – We have a channel on the Wikipedia Discord server for real-time discussion and collaboration with other copyeditors.

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