Editor’s Note: A version of this article was originally published in the STC Notebook in 2014 as part of a series. To make it easier for you to find these articles again in the future, they are tagged with the Eye for Editing tag, and the titles prefaced with the same phrase.
Author's Note: This is the last article (that currently exists) in this Eye for Editing series. It has been fun to revisit my thoughts from the “first edition” in STC Notebook to find that most, if not all of it, still holds true to the editing experience. Do you have an idea for a follow-up article that you’d like to publish in Corrigo? Would you like to put together your answers to my questions for others to read? Submit your ideas and articles to the Corrigo editor at editor@stc-techedit.org. And you are welcome to contact me any time to keep the conversation going
How do you think of yourself in your editing role? Is each document, article, topic, or book by the same author or team of writers an isolated editing task? Does each task seem to start from scratch as if you’d not edited that author’s work before? Or does each subsequent edit you deliver build on your previous suggestions and comments? Do subsequent documents indicate that the writer “got it the first (or last) time”?
In other words, do you think of yourself as a teacher or coach? This mindset doesn’t lend itself well to one-time edits for an author you will never work with again. But if you edit content for the same writers on an ongoing basis, you are in a teaching role by default. Your textbook is the company or department style guide, as well as whatever published style guide you’ve adopted for grammar and usage.
The editor and writer are working from the same textbook, but it often falls to the editor to gently, even repetitively remind the writer what’s in the textbook and how to apply it in practice. So is it the editor/teacher’s fault when the students still don’t seem to “get” the lesson? Obviously, the writer/student has to want to learn from each edit of their content. Let’s face it—writers are typically not as dedicated to the style guide as the editor is. Often, the editor is the maintainer of the department style guide and therefore, has a particular familiarity with it and fondness for its sage guidance.
For the editor’s part, I suggest that your edit comments always point to chapter and verse in the style guide to support the change you’re requesting. That way, the suggestion is not so much coming from you, as from the guide that you’ve all agreed to follow. If particular items in the style guide seem to be a constant challenge for one or more of your writers, consider offering a brief lunch-’n-learn session to say, raise awareness on several points in the style guide. Another idea is to publish a style guide or writing tip-of-the-week through email.
That leads me back to the other party in any edit, the author. As I said, the student has to be willing to learn from each edit. Perhaps the problem is not so much in whether the editor considers themself to be a teacher, but whether the writer considers each edit as an opportunity to learn and improve. We are all “set in our ways,” especially those of us who boast a 20- or 30-year career in technical writing. But I’m baffled when, after I make a correction—say, about the difference in usage of “if” and “whether”—and provide the very clear explanation from Chicago Manual of Style, the writer acknowledges the correctness of my edit based on Chicago, but continues to make the same mistake. The lesson wasn’t really learned. Sigh.
Did I mention that writers are not as dedicated to the style guide as the editor is? All I can say at this point is, see the earlier advice about repetitive reminders. I guess that’s what you might call job security.
I’ve presented a number of questions in this article. I would love to see your answers, including your answer to this last one: How do you work with writers who don’t use your edits as an opportunity to learn and improve their writing?
Paula Robertson has learned her editing skills over a long and varied career, while swapping among the various titles of writer, editor, and designer. No matter what her current job title, she has earned the right to call herself the Full-service Editor, because of her ability to review text and graphics as cohesive parts of a whole. In 2014, Paula was awarded the rank of STC Associate Fellow. Her current job title in STC is facilitator for the Solo Technical Communicator SIG/COI. You can reach her at: solotechnicalcommunicator@gmail.com