9 Best Proofreading Courses You Can Do Online

Proofread Anywhere offers online courses and workshops for people who want to become freelance proofreaders.

Proofread Anywhere has a general proofreading course made up of 13 modules, covering many aspects of freelance proofreading—from spelling and grammar to finding clients and billing them for your services.

It’s completely online and it’s self-paced, so you can take as long as you want to complete it. Their website says that students have been known to finish the course in as little as a month, but that it depends on how much time you can dedicate to it.

Cost

The Proofread Anywhere course costs $397–$497. $397 gets you lifetime access to the course materials. The $497 option also includes graded exams and membership in a private Facebook group.

If you’re not sure whether you want to take the full course, there are free introductory materials on the website you can try to help you decide. These include a free workshop. According to some reports, if you watch the workshop in full, you’ll be offered a $100 discount voucher that you can use for one of the Proofread Anywhere courses.

Knowadays, formerly known as Proofreading Academy, is a company that’s based in the UK. However, they serve English-speaking clients all over the world and they have courses in both British and American English (as well as Australian English).

The advantage of Knowadays is that it gives you the opportunity to find work when you’ve finished the course. If you pass the final assignment with a high enough score, they’ll let you start working on a trial basis with their partner company, Proofed.

Like Proofread Anywhere, the Knowadays course has 13 modules and covers not only the grammar and language skills you need for proofreading itself but also the practical skills and knowledge that freelancing requires.

Cost

The Knowadays proofreading course costs $399 (and there’s also an editing course for $499). You can do a free trial to help you decide whether it’s suitable for you.

The Chartered Institute of Editing and Proofreading or CIEP (formerly known as the Society for Editors and Proofreaders or SfEP) is a nonprofit professional organization based in the UK for editors and proofreaders. It has three different proofreading courses for beginner, intermediate, and advanced skill levels.

CIEP courses are very well-regarded in the publishing industry. The caveat is that they use British English, so if you’re based in the US, you’ll have to make allowances for British punctuation and spelling.

Cost

The course fees depend on whether you’ve paid for a CIEP membership. The table below shows a breakdown of the costs:

Membership costs £126 (equivalent to around $154) for entry-level or intermediate-level membership or £189 for professional-level membership (which comes with additional benefits but is designed for editors and proofreaders with substantial experience).

It’s worth paying for a membership if you plan to do more than one CIEP course in the space of a year.

The PTC is another UK-based nonprofit organization for editorial professionals. It offers online and self-study courses for the publishing industry and the wider business world. Like the CIEP courses, these are very well-regarded.

PTC courses include:

• Introduction to Proofreading: This is a short course that can be completed fairly quickly and costs only £30 (approximately $37).
• Essential Proofreading: Editorial Skills One: This course is more comprehensive than the introduction. It includes several modules and usually takes more than 50 hours to complete. It’s also more expensive at £405 (approximately $496).
• Introduction to Editorial Skills: Copy-Editing and Proofreading: This isn’t a self-study course, but rather an online classroom course that you do on Zoom. It takes place over 1–3 days (the dates are prescheduled). The course normally costs £720 (approximately $888), although you may sometimes be able to find special offers and there are also discounts for freelancers.

As well as proofreading courses, the Publishing Training Centre has copyediting courses and other courses that are meant for editorial professionals.

How to sign up: You’ll find an “enroll” button for each course on the pages linked above.

Emerson College offers an online course called Precision Proofreading that takes about 7 hours to complete. You can choose to do this course on its own if you want to focus exclusively on proofreading, or you can do it as part of the Emerson College Certificate in Copyediting.

To get the full certificate, you have to complete nine different courses online. Altogether, this takes about 45.5 hours.

Cost

The 7-hour proofreading course from Emerson College costs $250. Getting the full copyediting certificate costs $1,625 (as of the fall semester, 2022).

How to sign up: You’ll find an “enroll” button for the course on the page linked above. If enrollment is currently closed, click the “Request Information” button; you can submit a request for the university to notify you once the course opens again.

Temple University offers an online proofreading course, Proofreading Like a Pro. You can do it in isolation or as part of their Certificate in Editing and Business Writing.

In isolation, the course takes about 4 hours to complete (two 2-hour sessions). If you go for the full certificate, there are four courses to complete, plus a few online meetings.

Cost

Temple University’s basic proofreading course costs $249. Their full editing and writing certificate costs $995 in total. Your access to the courses will never expire, so you can take them any time you want.

How to sign up: You’ll find an “enroll” button for the course on the page linked above. If enrollment is currently closed, click the “Request Information” button; you can submit a request for the university to notify you once the course opens again.

Skillshare is a site that gives you access to thousands of classes on many different subjects, from photography to social media entrepreneurship.

Skillshare has many courses related to proofreading. Examples include:

• Kickstart Your Freelance Editor & Proofreader Career on Upwork
• How to Find and Correct Writing Errors: The Proofreading Guide

Cost

A Skillshare membership costs $165 per year and gets you access to any and all courses that you want to take.

If you’re not sure whether you want to commit to paying Skillshare’s yearly fee, you can sign up for a free one-month trial. Depending on how much free time you have, this might actually be long enough for you to complete several classes on the platform before you have to start paying for your subscription.

How to sign up: If you have a Skillshare account, you can sign up on the page for each proofreading course.

Udemy is an online learning marketplace that has courses on almost any topic you can think of. Some of the courses are paid and some are free.

Udemy’s proofreading courses include:

• Proofread like a Pro (despite the similar name, this is different than the course from Temple University)
• Proofreading to Perfection

The downside of Udemy is that anyone can create courses for the platform, so there’s less quality control than you’ll find with other providers.

Cost

The cost of Udemy courses varies widely. As mentioned, some are free, but finding free, high-quality ones will require some digging.

The ones listed above range from around $80 to $120, but they have frequent sales that sometimes slash their prices by up to 80%.

How to sign up: To register, sign up for a Udemy account and then click “Buy now” on the page for the course you want.

New York University offers a qualification called the Certificate in Professional Copyediting, Proofreading, and Fact-Checking. This includes an online course on editing and proofreading books, which you can also do on its own if you don’t want to go for the entire certificate.

This course has fixed start and end dates, so it’s less flexible than some of the alternatives out there. The basic editing course runs for about two months; if you opt for the full certificate program, you have to complete it within three years.

Cost

If you just want to take the course on editing and proofreading books, it will cost $949. The cost of the full certificate is much higher at $6,192.

How to sign up: Click “Add to Cart“on the pages linked above, then “Go to Cart” to finish enrolling..

In addition to proofreading courses, there are also many courses that focus on editing, which requires a slightly different skill set than proofreading. Proofreading consists of a final review of a text before it’s published and involves relatively small changes, whereas editing is carried out earlier in the process and usually involves more extensive changes.

There’s a significant degree of overlap between editing and proofreading, and many proofreaders also offer editing services. This means that editing courses are extremely useful for aspiring proofreaders (and vice versa).

University editing courses

Several respected colleges and universities offer editing courses:

• University of Chicago, Professional Development Editing Certificate: From the birthplace of the Chicago Manual of Style, this course teaches you the skills you need to enter the publishing industry or advance your editing career. The duration is 9–24 months (part-time), depending on your preferred study pace. One consideration is that, at $6,500, this is one of the most expensive courses we’ve seen.
• UC San Diego, Copyediting Certificate Program: This is another university certificate in copyediting you can do online. It’s a 12-month program and less flexible than many of the others we’ve listed, as you have to keep up with weekly assignments. The estimated cost to get the certificate is around $2,950 in total (including course fees and books).
• University of Washington, Certificate in Editing: This certificate costs $3,585 for three courses. It’s quite flexible, as you can take it online or through a blend of online and classroom learning (if you live in Seattle). If you choose the online option, it will take around two years to complete.
• UC Berkeley, Professional Sequence in Editing: This is a set of four courses that cost $850 each, so it’s $3,400 for the set. Most students complete the whole sequence (which includes 120 hours of classes) in one and a half years. However, note that you won’t earn a certificate by doing this.

Other worthwhile courses

You can also look into courses offered by the following organizations:

• The Editorial Freelancers Association: This organization for editorial professionals offers a number of high-quality editing courses—some self-paced and some with weekly deadlines—at relatively affordable prices (around $190–$400). They also sometimes offer online proofreading courses and webinars.
• ACES: The Society for Editing: This organization offers courses and educational resources for editors. They have a catalog called the ACES Academy that features editing webcasts, and they also offer a couple of editing certificates in collaboration with the Poynter Institute for Media Studies (a non-profit school for journalism). Their webcasts usually cost $30 for non-members (nothing for members), and their certificates cost $99–$150.
• Coursera: This site has learning materials from various universities and companies. Many courses are free to access, although you’ll often have to pay to get a certificate or do graded assignments. Few of their courses focus specifically on proofreading, but the site still has resources that you might find helpful. For example, check out the courses Writing for Business, Good with Words, and Academic English: Writing Specialization.

No, you don’t need any specific qualifications or training to be a proofreader. One of the advantages of professional proofreading is that clients will often be more interested in your professional portfolio, your resume, and how well you do in tests they set you than in your credentials.

Kate Lescano, a proofreader who has four years of experience, agrees that “Clients tend to prioritize your actual samples, efficiency, and word-of-mouth referrals over certifications or qualifications.”

How are certificates and training useful for proofreaders?

Although formal qualifications aren’t necessary, that doesn’t mean they’re a waste of time.

We spoke to many proofreading and editing experts who had undergone training. They recommended it as a way to:

1. Show clients and employers that you’re committed
2. Improve and update your skills

For example, one member of the Bay Area Editors’ Forum (BAEF), Kirsten Janene-Nelson, worked with a small literary press for over a decade before moving into freelance editing and proofreading.

Kirsten told us, “When I was heading into freelancing after years in-house, I consulted a colleague and asked whether I should include on my résumé the classes I’d taken … He said to take even more classes so as to ensure my skills were fresh and to demonstrate that I was dedicated to my profession.”

Another BAEF member, Erin Noble, who has been a freelance proofreader and copyeditor for about twenty years, explained how a lack of relevant training could leave a deficit in your proofreading skills. “While I have degrees in English and often know when something is wrong, it’s frustrating to not always be able to back it up with a rule or a citation,” she said.

This drives home the point that training isn’t just about getting hired—it’s also about ensuring you have the right skills to excel once you do.

How do you become a certified proofreader?

There’s technically no such thing as a “certified proofreader” in the United States. The US doesn’t have a single, universally accepted proofreading certification (although individual universities and editing organizations offer their own certifications).

When people refer to certified proofreaders, they’re usually talking about the proofreading industry in Canada. There’s a Canadian editorial association called Editors Canada that offers a certified proofreader exam.

It costs $550 to take the proofreading exam if you’re not a member of their association. Rumor has it that the exam is difficult, and you should only do it if you have extensive experience in the field.