Editor’s Note: A version of this article was originally published in the STC Notebook in September 2013 as the first in a series. Over the course of 2022, we hope to publish more of these articles. To make it easier for you to find these articles again in the future, they will be tagged with the Eye for Editing tag, and the titles prefaced with the same phrase.
The Eye for Editing column explores the topic of editing—technical editing, editing as a skill, practical tips, personal stories, and whatever tangents that might lead us to. I hope to engage you in reflection to answer the question, “Do you have an Eye for Editing?”
Is editing a learned or innate skill? I think the answer is “both.”
Let’s consider that you can break the skill of editing into three skill or ability levels:
- The ability to notice when something in a text is not “right.”
- The ability to know what to do to make it right.
- The ability to explain to someone else in an effective way how they can make it right.
I see these as progressive, cumulative skills. I submit that some of us are just born with skill number 1, and that would be me.
In looking back on my technical communication career, I realized that I enjoyed editing, and probably was an editor of sorts, long before I embraced writing. Somewhere along the way to my college English classes, I developed a dread of writing under pressure. I had always made As in English through grade school. But the terrifying time constraints of those essays in college class netted me a D on a mid-term paper, for which I was able to write only my name and a single sentence. The research paper I wrote outside of class was the only thing that salvaged a B grade for me that time. And when I walked out of my next and last English requirement, I thought I was done with writing under pressure!
I was not an English or Journalism major, and there was no such thing as Technical Writing curricula at the time. No matter to me, because I earned my degree in Fine Arts. Why then did I take a job as a secretary? So I could finally move away from home, silly! But my boss had an eighth-grade education, and more than once he would write something, then give it to me and say, “Here, make this sound like the King’s English.” I had no problem in doing that, and thank goodness he realized that “secretorial” skill in me.
In doing research for a book about my career journey to technical communication, I realized that that first job was my first professional experience in “technical” editing. OK, not so technical. It was also my first opportunity to do print design and layout before there was such a thing as desktop publishing. But that’s another story.
It has always been incredibly easy for me to spot typos, punctuation and capitalization errors, faulty grammar constructions. So easy, that I say, “typos find me,” much to my distress. Do you know how much easier it would be to go through life without noticing all these assaults on my sense of decency and order? Restaurant menus, road signs, so many objects of daily living brazenly flaunt their insults!
But this is the “gift” I’ve been given. And so, knowingly or not, I’ve found ways to use it, to share it in my work long before landing in technical communication. Where others only sought to format text, I dared to edit it. No one asked or expected me to, I just couldn’t not edit.
How about you? Let me know your thoughts as we begin to explore how editing is so much more than a three-item list of abilities, whether developed or innate, and so much more than being chased by tyrannical typos.
Paula Robertson has been in technical communication for a long time or longer, depending on how you choose to define it. No matter what her current job title, she likes to call herself the “Full-service Editor.” In STC, her current job title is Facilitator for the Solo Technical Communicator SIG/COI. You can reach her at: solotechnicalcommunicator@gmail.com.
Like you, I have an innate ability to recognize when writing is not quite right that others do not and I have worked to hone that skill. In my current role, the challenge is being able to clearly define the issue and the solution for the writer.