Ezref

Welcome

Hello, Ezref, and Welcome to Wikipedia! Please remember to sign your name on talk pages by clicking or or by typing four tildes (~~~~); this will automatically produce your username and the date. Also, please do your best to always fill in the edit summary field. Below are some useful links to facilitate your involvement. SMasters Happy editing! SMasters (talk) 15:10, 27 September 2011 (UTC) Getting started Introduction The five pillars of Wikipedia How to edit a page Intuitive guide to Wikipedia Finding your way around Table of contents Department directory Editing articles How to develop an article Manual of Style Getting help Frequently asked questions Cheatsheet Where to ask a question Help pages New contributors' help page Article Wizard – a Wizard to help you create articles How you can help Contributing to Wikipedia Community Portal Follow Wikipedia etiquette Practice civility

Welcome to the Guild of Copy Editors!

Hi Ezref, thank you for your interest in joining the Guild of Copy Editors (GOCE). I'd be happy to help you out, although I must warn you that my life is a bit busy these days, so I may not be able to respond to your questions in the timeliest of manners. Going off of what you wrote on my talk page, here are my responses. Acronyms should not be used in an article unless they have first been defined (like I did just here with "GOCE"). If there is ever an acronym used in the text of an article that I don't know what it means (and I can't conclusively find what it means on Wikipedia), then there is a template that can be used:{{expand acronym|date=Month year}}. Also, to make you aware, there is an entire page full of these "clean up templates" at WP:TC. Of course, only add tags as a last resort when you don't know what else to do. For best practice, don't add a tag to an article if you can do the work yourself to fix it.

As for common practices when it comes to copy editing, if ever I am copying a longer article, I will add the tag {{GOCEinuse}} before starting. This will alert people that you are currently editing the article so they should not edit it lest you/they run into an WP:edit conflict. For added insurance against edit conflicts, especially in larger articles, try to save your edits more frequently. Typically, I will edit an article section by section in these cases. But if it's a short article, I'll do it in one edit. If you have any questions about grammar, punctuation, and other formalities, please see the Manual of Style. I hope that answers some of your questions; if you have any more, feel free to leave a message on my talk page! Happy editing! --Tea with toast (話) 01:47, 3 October 2011 (UTC)