Sample some of the lessons . . .

The “click’n’link” Intro button in the lefthand menu panel will take you to a description of the course, the Signing up button will tell you what it costs. Below is a taster of some of the pages and exercises in Writing it Right.

To see a bigger extract from the page just click on each thumbnail

Online study advantages:

NO travel costs to Glasgow
NO commitment to set study times
ABILITY to compare your subbed exercises with the tutor's “perfect” versions
A VIRTUAL textbook (the web pages), so fewer notes for you to take

When you join the course, your “Read Me First” section should be the Guide. This will advise you on tackling distance learning, the structure of the lessons and all the technical stuff on exercises and dealing with Internet browsers.
One of the things you are given early on is an analysis of how subs should approach stories and go about making sure that no questions have been left unanswered. Healthy cynicism about raw copy is encouraged.
The art of writing intros to stories is made easier with a set of rules developed by experienced hands over the years. As well as warning you of the pitfalls, we also reveal some cunning tricks and trade secrets about grabbing Reader’s attention.
Sticking to style is important in any publication and in this lesson we talk about the areas where you will be likely to encounter “house rules”. Also discussed is “function, form, THEN fashion” and a few other design principles.
Every sub should develop a set of mental alarm bells that sound when certain things appear in copy. The course gives a guide to these – from loaded stories to loaded verbs – and warns when you should be even more on guard than usual.
Rows could well break out over some of the points raised in the lessons that concentrate on newspaper English usage. Thorny issues are met head on and there are no punches pulled in the attack on sloppy use of language.
Headings give a lot of people problems and we help out with a set of guidelines and rules that will make life easier. They should help you to avoid the worst of the pitfalls that sub-editors are increasingly falling into edition after edition.
And once you have learned the art of good headings, you can try putting right some bad ones with this interactive exercise.
Most of the time, there’s no need for subs to be scared of the law (unless you have been up to no good, of course). The principles of law and journalism hold no great mystery, but there are some tricky areas and you’ll get help with those.
Even the single column one-line caption can be made to sparkle. The course shows you all the tricks, building up to the “secret formula” for one of the hardest subbing skills – creating caption stories out of virtually nothing.

INTRO TO COURSE