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Watch Your Words is a brief, accessible writing and editing guide for students and professionals in journalism. The fifth edition includes the latest AP style updates, discussion of inclusive language and implicit bias, and sections on accuracy and fact-checking, brevity, clarity, and use of direct quotations, with exercises and an editing guide.
List of contents
Introduction: On Disruption and Continuity
Best Practices for Journalistic Writing
Implicit Bias and Inclusive Storytelling
Punctuation
-Rules and Guidelines
-Conjunction Junction: Comma Rules for and, but and or
-Nonessential vs. Essential: That vs. Which
-Punctuation Self-Test
Grammar
-Basic Terms and Concepts
-Grammar Terms and Concepts Exercise
-Mapping Who vs. Whom
-Making the Right Choice
-Practice Sentences: Who vs. Whom
-Other Rules and Guidelines
-Grammar Self-Tests
Usage
-Rules and Guidelines
-Usage Self-Test
RECAP: Comprehensive Self-Test
AP Style
-Evolutionary Updates and Evergreen Mainstays
-AP Style Study Guides & Self-Tests
Supplementary Self-Tests
-Punctuation/AP Style Test
-Grammar/AP Style Test
-Usage/AP Style Test
-Final Language-Skills Test
-Quality-Control Guide to Writing and Editing
-Accuracy and Fact-Checking
-Fact-Checking Exercise
-Brevity and Tightening
-Tightening Exercise
-Clarity
-Clarity Exercise
-Quotations and Attribution
-Quotations and Attribution Exercise
-Basic Editing Principles
Spelling
-Homonyms and Sound-Alikes Exercise
-Spelltraps
Copy-Editing Symbols
-Copy-Editing Symbols Self-Test
-Basic Symbolism
Answer Keys
-Punctuation Self-Test
-Grammar Terms and Concepts Exercise
-Grammar Self-Test I
-Grammar Self-Test II
-Usage Self-Test
-RECAP: Comprehensive Self-Test
-AP Style Self-Test I
-AP Style Self-Test II
-AP Style Self-Test III
-Punctuation/AP Style Test
-Grammar/AP Style Test
-Usage/AP Style Test
-Final Language-Skills Test
-Fact-Checking Exercise
-Tightening Exercise
-Clarity Exercise
-Quotations and Attribution Exercise
-Homonyms and Sound-Alikes Exercise
-Copy-Editing Symbols Self-Test
About the author
Marda Dunsky, a print journalist and journalism scholar, is an assistant professor in residence at Northwestern University in Qatar. Dunsky has 15 years of service at Northwestern University in Evanston. As a member of the Medill School of Journalism faculty, she has taught print editing, basic reporting, global journalism, and a seminar of her design, “Reporting the Arab and Muslim Worlds.” She has also served as an adviser to international students in the Medill MSJ program. She has held editing and reporting positions at newspapers including source and copy editor on the national-foreign news desk of the Chicago Tribune and Arab affairs reporter at The Jerusalem Post.
