Shout-out to University of Illinois Journalism 421. These links are far more clickable than those on the paper handout. 😉

Essential, Daily Tools

• Desktop or laptop with Word+ (Editor’s Toolkit Plus, PerfectIt, Office Tabs, custom macros); also: iPad with Pages (love/hate) and smartphone with email access, Dropbox, and Docs To Go (or similar) now nearly essential
• Reliable email
• Chicago Manual of Style, AP Stylebook, Merriam-Webster Collegiate (online subscriptions preferred)
• Google, Google Books, Google Scholar, Corpus of Contemporary American English (COCA)
• Dropbox, Box, Google Drive, HighTail (previously YouSendIt), or similar
• Evernote, Pocket, or similar
• Excel (or Freshbooks, Harvest, etc.) for project estimates, time tracking, invoicing
• Online editor community: Twitter (e.g., Copyeditors-n-Wordniks), Copyediting-L, Editors’ Association of Earth (FB group), various LinkedIn groups, Copy Editing (Google+ community)

Top 20 Blogs and Sites for Editors and Wordniks

1. American Copy Editors Society
2. An American Editor
3. American Heritage Dictionary Tumblr
4. Arrant Pedantry
5. Chicago Style Q&A
6. Copyediting.com
7. FreelancersUnion.org blog
8. Grammar Girl’s Quick and Dirty Tips
9. KOK Edit’s Copyeditors’ Knowledge Base
10. Language Log
11. LibroEditing blog
12. Macmillan Dictionary blog
13. Merriam-Webster Unabridged blog
14. NYT After Deadline
15. Online Etymology Dictionary
16. OxfordWords
17. The Proofreader’s Parlour
18. Sentence First
19. Wordnik blog
20. Baltimore Sun’s You Don’t Say [with archives here and more McIntyre posts here]

Books on My Desk [i.e., in a stack by my couch]

• The Copyeditor’s Handbook (2011) by Amy Einsohn
• The Subversive Copy Editor (2009) by Carol Fisher Saller
• Garner’s Modern American Usage (2009) by Bryan A. Garner
• Merriam-Webster’s Dictionary of English Usage (1994)
• Making Word 2010 Work for You (2014) by Hilary Powers
• Effective Onscreen Editing (2010) by Geoff Hart
• Business Planning for Editorial Freelancers (2013) by Louise Harnby