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Editing law texts: whetting your appetite …

Editing law texts: Whetting your appetite

Join PEG for our webinar series where you will have the opportunity to upgrade your knowledge and skills as editors and proofreaders in a variety of ways: linguistic, stylistic, business, digital, technical and more. Curious about what it takes to edit law theses, textbooks and journals and what doing so entails? Wanting to know more? During this webinar on 26 September, the aim will be to familiarise you with the nitty-gritties of such texts that you would have to negotiate should you be tempted undertake their improvement.

Date: Thursday, 26 September 2024

Time: 18:00–20:00

Place: Online (Zoom meeting)

Facilitator: Ken McGillivray, in conversation with John Linnegar

CPD hours: PEG members will earn CPD hours according to the criteria published on the PEG website. Attendees of the live presentation will receive a certificate confirming their attendance and the duration of the webinar. Those who are unable to attend the webinar live may submit their receipt as proof of having received the recording.

Pre-webinar materials: None.

Focus: The content, language, lexicon, style/register and referencing conventions of law texts aimed at legal practitioners and law students tend to be unique to this genre. It is therefore important that those language practitioners who wish to dip their toes in these waters prepare themselves well before doing so. This includes immersing themselves in the major House Style conventions, especially those that predominate in South Africa. For example, those of the SA Law Journal, the SA Journal of Human Rights, and those of the law faculties of some universities. This webinar aims to disabuse you by exposing you to a soupcon of the features and demands of this genre.

About our facilitator

Ken McGillvray first began editing law texts in the 1990s and continues to specialise in this genre to the present. His experience of working on such manuscripts has ranged from master’s and PhD theses and dissertations to journal articles and academic textbooks. To bring himself up to speed, he underwent training in this specialised craft and mastered the House Style of a leading publisher of law texts in South Africa. What he finds most challenging and satisfying about this genre is the number of firm conventions that are adhered to both nationally and internationally in law texts – which makes them that much easier to apply across a range of branches of the law and manuscripts. Having said this, there’s always something new on the horizon: whether it is the introduction of industrial law in the 80s and 90s (and a brand-new journal to cover it) or the inception of the South African Constitution, which has opened up a plethora of publications on the subject of constitutional law. Having studied Latin at school, Ken feels particularly comfortable with the legal terminology derived from Latin that commonly occurs in legal writing. It’s nevertheless an exacting genre to work in, as is the law it writes about!

John Linnegar has been an avid ‘improver of authors’ words’ for more than four decades now, and remains dedicated to making their texts read as clearly as possible (and in the process saving a reputation or two!). He encountered his first law text as a rookie copy-editor in the 1980s, when he worked as an inhouse copy-editor for South Africa’s oldest and leading publisher of law publications: law reports, journals, textbooks and revision services. This entailed immersing himself in the minutiae of legislation (Bills and Acts of Parliament, Regulations, Government Gazettes, etc.) and getting to know legal parlance, especially that used in the pronouncements of judges. He continues to specialise in editing law texts: theses, law journal articles and textbooks. Compiling and updating the law publisher’s House Style Manual proved to be a seminal project in his career and a great learning experience!

Apart from co-authoring three of the PEG guides, John is author of several texts dealing with matters grammatical, stylistic and academic. These include Engleish, our Engleish: Common errors in South African English and how to resolve them (Pharos, 2013) and, most recently, with Ken McGillivray, grammar, punctuation and all that jazz . . . (MLA Publishers, 2019) and Academic writing & editing: Towards clear, concise and coherent texts (MLA Publishers, 2024). Since 2000 he has been training copy editors and proofreaders for South Africa’s book publishing industry (including a training course on editing law texts) and championing the professionalisation of our craft and its practitioners by means of accessible online short courses. To this end, he co-authored Text Editing: A handbook for students and practitioners (UPA, Brussels, 2012, reprinted 2022).

About the webinar

Ken and John will be in conversation about what it takes to take on the editing of law texts, the many and varied nitty-gritties of this genre and in particular its challenges it poses for the uninitiated, including:

  • How to approach law texts generally
  • Style, tone and register
  • Terminology peculiar to law texts
  • Citation of legal resources
  • The short-title referencing system and cross-referencing
  • Citing case law
  • Citing legislation and international instruments
  • Compiling the reference list to accommodate different source types

Cost

Affiliation Early-bird registration fee1 Registration fee2
PEG members R295 R380
Members of affiliated organisations3 R495 R580
Non-affiliated members R695 R780

1Before or on 18 September

2Between 19 and 24 September

3Association of Southern African Indexers and Bibliographers (ASAIB), Professional Journalists’ Association of South Africa (ProJourn), Southern African Freelancers’ Association (SAFREA), South African Science Journalists’ Association (SASJA), the South African Translators’ Institute (SATI), Publishers’ Association of South Africa (PASA), Society of English-language professionals in the Netherlands (SENSE), Institute of Professional Editors Limited (IPEd), Chartered Institute of Editing and Proofreading (CIEP), Editorial Freelancers Association (EFA) and Nordic Editors and Translators (NEaT).

Please register by completing and emailing the registration form.

Deadline for registrations: 12:00 on Tuesday 24 September.

26 September, 2024 @ 18:00 - 20:00 Africa/Johannesburg at Online (Zoom) by PEG | Nitty gritty Third quarter Webinar Zoom

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