John Linnegar

Until 2010, like many other editors, John Linnegar had little idea of how to distinguish between the nuanced three levels of editing (and that after 30 years in the game!). Then he began researching the subject, only to find that less than a handful of authors had written about it! It’s their ideas — plus his own guide on how possibly to quantify the levels in specific editing tasks — that he will be sharing and workshopping, using a set of real texts.

John has been a text editor, proofreader and indexer of school and academic textbooks, reports and journal articles since the 1970s. For almost 20 years he has trained generations of editors, proofreaders and indexers. During this time he has published several books on aspects of language usage and editing, including Engleish, our Engleish: Common errors in South African English and how to resolve them (NB Publishers, 2009) and Text Editing: A handbook for students and practitioners (UPA, Brussels, 2012). Now based in Antwerp, Belgium, he is a member of a number of professional associations, including SENSE, MET and Australian and South African societies and a regular presenter at conferences. His postgraduate research is on the mentoring of language practitioners online.

John’s conference presentation is entitled Garnering those English usage and style gremlins: Revealing the contemporary even-handedness of GMEU. John will also give a Friday afternoon workshop entitled It needs only a ‘light’ edit: Negotiating the differences between light, medium and heavy editing.