Making Sense of Grammar
This 90-minute webinar will look at the main grammatical issues underpinning writing and editing. While AI programs can be of some help, it’s vital for editors to understand the fundamentals of grammar. This masterclass will give you the skills and the confidence to negotiate your way through the grammatical minefields that are a routine aspect of editorial activity.
Attendees will be able to post queries in the chat, and the tutor will respond to these after the session. The talk is supported with extensive reference material for participants to reinforce their understanding.
Sign up for both Making Sense of Grammar and Making Sense of Punctuation and save £40.
Who is it for?
Anyone working in publishing or communications who wants to improve their grammar, including:
- in-house and freelance editors, copywriters and project managers
- marketing and PR staff
- people who want to be more confident in their judgements on these issues and in their ability to defend their editorial and stylistic decisions
Programme
- Verbs: the engine of the sentence
- Clauses and sentences
- Relative clauses: ‘that’ or ‘which’?
- Three structural issues
- Grammatical ‘rules’: myth or reality?
What will you achieve?
At the end of this webinar, you will gain:
- a clearer understanding of the main issues surrounding grammar
- more confidence in your ability to make, and defend, decisions on grammar
- knowledge of where to go to get answers to any outstanding questions you may have
You will also receive a set of reference materials to consult in your day-to-day work.
Next session
12 February 2026
Price
£60 + VAT
Course format
- Virtual classroom
- 10:00am to 11.30am
- 90 minutes with no break
Date information for future sessions
February 2026
- Dates: 12 February 2026
- Times: Each session will run from 10.00am to 11.30am
October 2026
- Dates: 20 October 2026
- Times: Each session will run from 10.00am to 11.30am
What you will need
To join the course, you will need access to a computer, tablet or laptop with a camera and microphone. You will need to activate a free Zoom account to join the course. This takes 2 minutes and does not require any payment. It is purely for administrative purposes.
How the course is delivered
The course is delivered in 1 x 90-minute session on Zoom.
You will need to activate a free Zoom account to join the course. This takes 2 minutes and does not require any payment. It is purely for administrative purposes.
Any information to be completed beforehand will be sent via email.
Accessibility
Please contact us at with any accessibility or special requirements, for example having in-session captions or the learning materials sent to you in advance.
If you have any concerns about technical requirements or access please contact us on or telephone +44 (0)20 8874 2718.
In-company training
This course is also available for in-company training, either virtually or in person at your office. Course content is tailored to suit your requirements. Group sizes range from 5 to 12 attendees. To find out more, email or telephone +44 (0)20 8874 2718.
About the tutor(s)

After an early career in teaching, educational research and educational publishing, Andrew Steeds went freelance, setting up Simply Put, a company focused on making unnecessarily complicated documents clearer and more accessible, in terms of both how they are written and how they are designed. For Simply Put, he works on his own, with designers and with others to support clients to communicate more clearly and more efficiently with their readers.
Andrew has been running courses for the Publishing Training Centre (PTC) for 25 years. His main focus is on editorial activity, but he has an equal interest in the process of writing and the presentation skills of grammar and punctuation, and he runs courses in these areas, too. The PTC’s Essential Grammar, an e-learning resource which he wrote in 2017, has so far had just under 2,000 student enrolments on the course.
He divides his training time equally between in-company work and open courses.
Related courses
The PTC offers virtual classroom courses, self-study distance-learning courses, and a range of e-learning modules. See below for those that complement or build on this course.
Virtual Classroom Courses
- Advanced Copy-Editing
- Applying AI – Tools, Ethics and First Practical Steps
- Copyright – the Basics
- Editorial Project Management
- Editorial Skills for All
- Grammar and Punctuation – the Basics
- How to Mark Up PDFs with Adobe Acrobat
- Introduction to Editorial Skills: Copy-Editing and Proofreading
- Introduction to Project Management
- Making Sense of Punctuation
- Working with Authors
- Writing for Online Audiences
e-Learning Modules
- A Comprehensive Guide to Copy-Editing
- A Copy-Editor's Guide to Working with Authors
- An Editor's Guide to Working with Typesetters
- An Editor's Guide to Author Queries
- An Editor's Guide to Editing Fiction
- An Editor's Guide to Editing Illustrations
- An Editor's Guide to Editing References
- An Editor's Guide to Editorial Style
- An introduction to Marketing
- An Introduction to Proofreading
- An Introduction to Publishing
- Essential Copyright for Publishers
- Essential Editorial Project Management
- Proofreading PDFs: A Complete Guide for Editors
For more information about any of these courses, please email or sign up to receive our newsletter for updates on these and our other offerings.
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