This open course is designed for experienced editors working in non-fiction. Its focus is on the more complex issues of the craft, with attendees’ own experience and approach playing a major part in determining its shape.
The course is delivered over two half days. It includes exercises, and direction and presentation from the tutor. Delegates will also be expected to listen to, and to learn from, each other’s contributions.
Attendees may have already attended either of the PTC’s courses Introduction to Editorial Skills or Progress in Editorial Skills.
Course format
- Virtual classroom
- 9.00am to 12.30pm
- 4 x 1½-hour sessions, split across two half days comprising two half-day sessions one week apart
Date information for future sessions
November 2025
- Dates: 20 & 27 November 2025
- Times: Each session will run from 9.00am to 12.30pm
- Tutor: Caroline Knight
What you will need
To join the course, you will need access to a computer or laptop with a camera and microphone. You will need to activate a free Zoom account to join the course. This takes two minutes and does not require any payment. It is purely for administrative purposes.
About the tutor(s)
One tutor will deliver all three sessions of a course.
In an in-house career that took her to Berlin, London, Oxford and Cambridge, Caroline Drake worked on a wide range of academic books, journals and illustrated trade titles. She was trained at Blackwell and Cambridge University Press, where, as senior subeditor then copy-editorial manager, she in turn trained copy-editors and proofreaders for fifteen years. She updated Butcher’s Copy-editing, with a colleague, for the fourth edition.
Now freelance, Caroline enjoys helping authors to get things right, first time. She has created and taught courses for a variety of clients, including publishers, educational organisations, the CIEP, the reporters of the Scottish Parliament and the Parliamentary Research Service at the House of Commons.
Since 1999, Sarah Sodhi has proofed, tagged, bound, corrected, edited, managed, commissioned, subbed, scheduled, estimated and produced a great deal of content – from interactive, multi-media resources to marketing leaflets, from monthly magazines to 900-page medical tomes.
Starting her career at a small medical publisher in Oxford, Sarah produced medical textbooks, journals and a bi-monthly magazine. She then moved into the public sector to work for an adult education charity, introducing formal scheduling procedures, progress-chasing systems and detailed budgets. After this, she immersed herself in the education sector, editing and managing digital and print resources for primary, secondary and adult education publishers.
Caroline Knight began her career in publishing at Penguin Books in 1989, when she joined Editorial 2, the department dedicated to copy-editing. She has been a PTC tutor since 1996 and a freelancer since 2010.
Caroline became managing editor of Allen Lane The Penguin Press in 1995 before moving to Weidenfeld & Nicolson Illustrated in 1997. She lived in Greece, working freelance and tutoring at the PTC, from 2000 to 2003, when she became managing editorial director at William Heinemann, an imprint of the Random House group. Five years later, she moved to Atlantic Books, where she stayed until 2010 when she moved to rural Kent and rejoined the freelance community.
She has worked with Alastair Campbell, Vince Cable, David Willetts, Margaret Drabble and the late Herman Leonard, as well as a wide variety of other less famous authors. She enjoys editing both fiction and non-fiction, with a leaning towards history and politics.
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.
Please read our Terms & Conditions