Innate Qualities or Learned Skills? Copy Editors Disagree About the Need for Training

This survey of US copy editors, proofreaders, and fact-checkers ( N = 472) examines practitioners’ perceptions of the skills and training required for the field. The participants recommended that new hires be skilled in grammar, sentence structure, working on deadline, time management, accuracy, fact-checking, and critical thinking; they disagreed about whether certain skills are innate or whether they can be taught. They also disagreed about whether such training should occur in universities or through on-the-job mentoring.