People hold widely divergent views on grammar and punctuation. Some believe in time-honoured ‘rules’, and feel that they should be observed in all circumstances. Others question the legitimacy of these rules, believing that language changes and that what was ‘right’ for one generation isn’t necessarily right for the next.
As an editor or a writer, how do you find your own position on this contentious subject? How do you gain confidence in your ability to argue the case for your editorial decisions, particularly against people who might take a completely different position from you?
For many people working in the publishing and communications industries, this is even more challenging because they are unlikely to have been taught about these issues at school. This short course will look at some of the core issues relating to grammar and punctuation. It will give you an understanding of the various positions taken on them – and the confidence to make your own decisions, based on the kinds of text you’re working on and the readers you are trying to reach.
Course format
- Virtual classroom
- 9.00am to 1.00pm
- 2 x 1½-hour sessions plus break
Date information for future sessions
September 2025
- Date: 30 September 2025
- Times: 9.00am to 1.00pm
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.
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.
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