The Official Publication of the STC Technical Editing SIG
Diane Feldman
At the beginning of 2000, the TE SIG was in a peculiar state: it had no leader or infrastructure, but it had hundreds of members. That strange juxtaposition of facts told me that editors are ready and eager to exchange ideas, concerns, and resources, but had no means of doing so. In the past year, we have made the first steps to provide the missing means.
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”
Nancy Titus Napierala
I had no idea that technical editing could be a career path, yet that is what I learned when I took a class in this field as a graduate student at Northern Illinois University. Considering for the first time the possibility of specializing in the field of technical communication, I recalled my impression that scientific writing and editing must be highly difficult and specialized. People with traditional humanities backgrounds (like mine) are also thought to be averse to anything connected with such hard sciences as mathematics, chemistry, physics, or engineering. Yet I had already experienced another seemingly high-tech field — accounting.
Continue reading “Discovering the Field of Scientific Editing”
Alan Kelly
I work in a department responsible for on-the-job training and have experienced the challenges of working with people for whom English is a second language. I see that sometimes they become frustrated, for lack of a better term, when writing. What they have in their minds is not always reflected in the written document. My colleagues are extremely knowledgeable – they just have a language barrier. This is where I come in.
Continue reading “Editing Documents Written by People Speaking English as a Second Language”