The Official Publication of the STC Technical Editing SIG
Diane Feldman
In many groups that produce technical communication, an editor is a luxury — someone using headcount that would be better filled by another writer. These groups’ creative solution to editing the work they produce is to rely on the writers to edit each other’s work.
Geoff Hart
“Political correctness is an oxymoron”—Jean-Marie Golsse
Even as we’re moving through the first decade of our new millennium, the “naughty aughties” as some wags have dubbed it [*1], we’re still dragging along plenty of baggage [*2] from the last century. For example, inadvertently using offensive or politically incorrect words remains one of those things that wakes editors, screaming, in the middle of the night.
Continue reading “Political Correctness for the “Naughty Aughties””
Geoff Hart
One of the thornier problems in moving to onscreen editing involves communicating your proposed changes to authors—and I use the words communicating and proposed advisedly. Few of us have the authority to simply impose changes; most of us must let authors review and perhaps reject our edits. Since whatever corrections you make onscreen will look just like the text the author originally typed unless you somehow make the comments stand out, how do you identify where you’ve made a change? By making the appearance of what you type differ from what the author typed.
Geoff Hart
One nice thing about word processors is that they make it much easier to find and fix the inevitable errors that arise from authors who can’t spell and editors like me who get fumblefingered under deadline pressure.
Cynthia Thompson
Since I entered publishing in the early 1980s as an editor for a small publisher of religious books, computers have caused immense changes in the business. Many elements of the editor’s duties in prepress have been transformed by:
(1) electronic submission,
(2) electronic workflow management,
(3) desktop electronic operation, and
(4) electronic proofing.
Continue reading “Electronic Prepress Viewed by a Book Editor”