Writing and Editing: Word Choice and Word Order Review — Michigan on Coursera

The course is dense with genuinely useful, sentence-level technique — deleting weak words, sharpening verbs, ordering clauses for emphasis — illustrated with sharp examples drawn from law, literature and rhetoric. Learners consistently call the material rich and eye-opening. The recurring caveat is volume: several reviewers say there is simply a lot to absorb, and that the density can make the structure feel cluttered if you are working through it quickly.

Patrick Barry, a law professor and director of digital academic initiatives at Michigan Law, is the strongest asset of the course. Reviewers describe him as knowledgeable, down-to-earth, funny and engaging, and his enthusiasm for the craft of editing comes through clearly. Almost no criticism is aimed at his teaching; the complaints are about format and pacing, not delivery.

Free to audit with full access to the video lessons, and a Coursera subscription only adds the peer-graded assignments and certificate. For a university course of this calibre, learners overwhelmingly rate value as excellent. The one reservation is that the graded practice — arguably where editing skill is cemented — sits behind the paywall.

The editing exercises are practical and directly tied to the lessons, which learners appreciate. The weak points are the same two that recur across Coursera writing courses: peer-reviewed grading can be inconsistent, and a minority found the assignment structure confusing relative to the volume of content being covered.

The skills transfer directly to professional, legal and academic writing — anywhere precise, persuasive prose matters. Multiple reviewers, including experienced lawyers, report immediately tightening their own writing. The examples lean toward law and rhetoric, which is a strength for professional writers but means some illustrations feel less relevant to other fields.