Tuesday night, The Sacramento Press office was the place to be if you wanted to improve your writing. Clare Noonan—who has more than 20 years’ experience working as a reporter and copy editor for The Modesto Bee and The Sacramento Press—presented to a crowd of roughly 50 people to “Improve Your Writing and Self-Editing.” The interactive workshop focused on tips for self-editing and common mistakes that Noonan found when reading copy. “Get rid of the clunk,” she said. She suggested to “tighten up” writing by getting rid of saying things twice. For example, the phrase “massive aircraft carrier” does not need the word massive, since an aircraft carrier is large enough already. On the han

Once you publish your story, it’s final, so we encourage you to save it as a draft or view it as a preview before hitting the publish button to make sure you haven’t overlooked any typos or mistakes. That said, we all make mistakes, and we want your published work looking its best. If you ever catch a spelling error, typo or spacing issue, send an e-mail to support@sacramentopress.com and we can fix it. We also offer free copy editing. Send your story to journalism@sacramentopress.com, and we’ll get it edited and back to you within 24 hours.

The Sacramento Press office is almost done with its remodel. Our first workshop in the new space will be Wednesday, July 21, from 6:30 - 8 p.m. It is titled "Improve Your Writing with Self Editing."  The workshop will teach writers how to remove unnecessary words that clutter writing and create more concise writing that is easier for readers to understand. Clare Noonan will teach the interactive workshop. Noonan has a bachelor's degree in journalism from the University of Kentucky. She worked at The Modesto Bee for more than 20 years as a reporter for business, news, feature and sports while also copy editing. She also worked as assistant news editor and assistant city editor in charge

Format and writing style is about more than just looks. How you format your writing might make the difference between people reading your article or passing it by. One of the trickiest parts of news writing is keeping things brief and to the point. Stylistically this means paragraphs that don't exceed two sentences. While it seems excessive, if you read any major newspaper you will realize that this rule is nearly universal. By adding whitespace an article seems more readable; huge paragraphs deter readers. Good grammar, spelling and punctuation, is another important part of having your work read. Proofread your work, or have another person proofread it. If you have no one to proofrea