Author: Yoel Strimling

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Conversation Starter: The Joys of Teaching Engineers to Write

By Christa Bedwin

Editor’s Note: This article was originally published in April 2016, so it is part of the Best of Corrigo series. However, based on the interest in a similar article, I decided to republish it as a Conversation Starter as well.
It has been updated for 2020.

After twenty years of editing science, research, education, and engineering documentation, some of my favorite people to edit for are engineers. This baffles some of my fellow editors, who find engineers confusing or complicated to work with, and so I began to teach courses on how to navigate editing with engineers, and with engineering content. (I also teach courses for engineers to learn to write better.)

I am always delighted to discuss this topic further – please feel free to write to me! I’m easy to find on the Internet.

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Coming Attractions: Let’s Talk about Teaching Engineers to Write

Communication with our clients is key, but many editors seem to find that engineers speak another language entirely! How can we adapt to work effectively with this delightful, and often lucrative, type of client?

As part of Corrigo’s series of Conversation Starter articles, I’ve asked Christa Bedwin to start a conversation on this topic based on her personal experiences of twenty years of editing science, research, education, and engineering documentation.
Her article will be published here on Corrigo on 13 August 2020.

To join in on what we hope will be a fascinating conversation, you can submit your own article on the subject to Corrigo (editor@stc-techedit.org), or you can write your thoughts the Comments section. If there are enough comments, we’ll collect them all and post them as an article as well.

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Of Interest: License to Edit: Techniques for Technical Editing Success

On 7 July 2020 at 2 pm EDT, Ann Marie Queeney will present a webinar titled License to Edit: Techniques for Technical Editing Success.
Click here to register: https://stc-techedit.org/tiki-index.php?page=License+to+Edit

In this fascinating, multi-communities event, we will explore how the editing of the iconic James Bond series can help technical editors sharpen their skills. Ann Marie will draw upon Ian Fleming and his editing team’s witty and insightful letters for an interactive discussion about technical editing issues, such as technical accuracy, jargon and clichés, and consistency. There will also be time for a few James Bond fun facts.

Ann Marie Queeney is a director on the STC board and a member of the Technical Editing and Policies and Procedures SIGs. She is the owner of A.M. Queeney, LLC a consulting business specializing in procedures and other process documents used in the healthcare industry. She is available for webinar and in-person training on a variety of technical communication topics.

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This Worked for Me: Live Editing – A Helpful Exercise

by Paula Robertson, STC Associate Fellow

Have you ever wished for a “quick-and-dirty” way to impart all of your editing expertise to a recipient of your edits without having to explain and comment and rewrite and suggest and explain some more, back and forth, in written edits? If only there was a way for your thought process and rationale to be magically conveyed along with your detailed words, rewrites, and deletions. (Why isn’t it obvious to them anyway? Alas, but our education systems didn’t train us to write clearly.)

You might say editors are just wired differently from writers. Rather, writers have different goals than editors do. But isn’t there some easy way for us to come together of one mind toward the common purpose of clearly communicating to our mutual target audience? I believe the answer is Yes. Yes, there is.

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