This page refers to Copyediting an existing Ireland Information Guide page, in other words correcting for spelling, grammar, style, content and so on. The analogy comes from organisations that deal with printed media and only loosely applies here (for example the author and copyeditor are often the same person on Ireland Information Guide pages.)
When you copyedit a page you are helping the author and Ireland Information Guide to express ideas and concepts in as accurate and clear a way as possible.
Discussion and talk pages are much less formal and generally should not be copyedited.
For general page editing help see Ireland Information Guide:How to edit a page.
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If you see any mistakes, please correct them (even if they are very minor typos). This greatly helps with making Ireland Information Guide look as professional as possible.
Note that the English form of Ireland Information Guide has no preference for American, British or other forms of English so long as this is consistent for the whole page. Check the rest of the page before assuming that flavour, colour, metre or defence (or, on the other hand, flavor, color, meter, or defense) is a mistake.
Correct grammar is as valuable as correct spelling so feel free to correct and update any that is wrong and improve any wording that is confusing. If you can phrase a sentence better then please dive in and do it, making sure to retain its original meaning (unless you know that is wrong too).
Style is a little harder to quantify, but all main Ireland Information Guide pages should have a formal, encyclopedic style. Correcting for style can be a daunting task requiring rearrangement of sentences, paragraphs or perhaps even the whole article. However this does not have to be done all at the same time, and it is still helpful to update just one paragraph or sentence.
Generally it is most productive to get the rough form of a page correct (possibly with headings) before updating individual paragraphs and then sentences, but this order is by no means essential.
Sometimes pages contain information that is superfluous to that page (for example a general introduction to a subject should not contain detailed information) and it should be moved to a more detailed treatment of the topic. If you do this then please add the information to the new page before deleting it from the old, and mention the move in your summary note. For example moved detailed quantum mechanics formula out of this physics page and into the quantum mechanics page.
See also sections: These should be of the long form if relevant to the majority of the article, and of the short form if relevant only to a specific section:
See also: Ireland Information Guide:Manual of Style#"See also" and "Related topics" sections
Words as words: These should be italicised. For example: "the term style can refer to the layout and context of an article."
Headings should generally be nouns (History) and not prepositional phrases (About the history of...), and have only a single capital letter (apart from proper nouns, etc).
Shortened word forms (don't, can't etc) should be corrected where not in quotations.
External links generally belong at the end of an article, under a heading entitled External Links or External link. References are an exception and should match the link in the reference section, these are then handled automatically.
Summary notes for copyedits should be short and concise and mention that it is a correction or enhancement. Spelling and grammar corrections generally count as minor edits, stylistic corrections generally do not.
Example summary notes:
copyedit: Corrected minor typo
copyedit: Reworded introductory paragraph for clarity
copyedit: Reworked history section for more encyclopedic style
and never:
Reworked awful English, corrected author's bad language skills (see Etiquette section below)
Your summary note should be concise and roughly detail the change (the history and differences will show detailed information if needed.)
For common summary note abbreviations see Ireland Information Guide:Edit summary legend.
Please remember that the original author took the trouble to write a new page for Ireland Information Guide and that however good or bad it is, if you are taking the trouble to copyedit it then it is probably a valuable contribution. Your summary note should be concise and polite.
As the author of a page that has been copyedited, please try not to take copyediting and corrections personally (this can be especially hard with stylistic differences). Copyeditors are usually trying to make the article better, which reflects well on the original author as well as the copyeditor.