Tag: Michelle Corbin

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Learning How to Edit

Michelle Corbin

In the middle of September, I posted the following questions to the STCTESIG-L listserv, the Technical Editing SIG discussion list:

  • How did you learn to edit?
  • What courses did you take to learn to edit?
  • Did you take online tutorials?
  • Did you take a local community college course?
  • Did you read a book?
  • Did you teach yourself “on the job”?

The most popular answer to these questions was college courses, community college courses, or certificate classes – in editing but also in writing as well. Many people reported that learning how to write well helped them learn how to edit well, and that understanding the writer’s perspective was critical to being a successful editor.

The most interesting (to me, anyway) answer to these questions was a programming course or a course on the technical subject matter that the text is written about. Understanding the technology or subject matter, at least to some degree, does indeed make someone a better technical editor, and I can definitely see how it helped someone learn how to edit.

Here is the complete list of ways that our SIG members learned how to edit:

  • College courses, as part of Technical Communication degrees
  • Community college courses
  • Educational courses on the technical subject matter
  • As part of a newsletter staff
  • From exercises in books
  • STC conference sessions
    • Sentence diagramming (You can search for many different STC conference proceedings papers on editing sentences and sentence diagramming on the STC Conference proceedings site: http://www.stc.org/pubs/proceedSearch01.asp(external link))
    • Rules or Myths: The Changing English language (You can find Karen O’Keefe’s session materials on the STC Conference Web site: http://www.stc.org/53rdConf/sessions/session.materials.asp(external link), and you can probably search on each of the conference session materials site for more presentations on editing)
  • On the job, trial and error, internships
  • Mentors, on the job and within professional organizations
  • Being edited, by peers and by professors
  • Reading, anything and everything
  • Practice, practice, practice, consciously and unconsciously
  • Grammar books
  • Style books (Chicago Manual of Style, AP Style, any style book really)
  • Discussion lists
  • EEI Communications, and their selection of courses:
    http://www.eeicom.com/onlinetraining/index.html(external link)
  • U.S. Department of Agriculture courses: http://grad.usda.gov/search.php?searchtype=simple&searchterm=EDIT&action=search(external link)

In answering these questions about how they learned to edit, our SIG members often paid homage to their favorite grammar books, style books, or other editing resources that they used. I also compiled a list of those resources, which we hope to publish very soon.