In keeping with our promise to provide an article on watercooler chats, here is a summary article of the last watercooler chat of the year 2010. The chat was moderated by Rick Fitch. Rick Fitch, a senior STC member, has 15 years of experience as a technical editor, including in the telecommunications and aerospace industries.
The purpose of the chat was to get some clarity on the following two questions (excerpt from the chat is given below):
- Are “the levels of edit” actually being used by technical editors in their jobs, and if so, how?
- Are the levels of edit a valuable tool that is helping (or can help) technical editors meet editing customers’ needs and achieve deadline, quality, cost, and other objectives for technical documentation? Or is the main value theoretical, rather than practical?
And given below are some of the questions that cropped up during the course of the chat.
What does levels of edit refer to?
During the chat, participants provided different perspectives and interesting definitions for levels of edit. Here are the definitions of levels of edit that were provided at the chat:
- Levels of edit define sets of tasks for a given editing job. They help the author and the editor to see what will be done in the same way.
- Levels of edit also help establish how much time will be spent on a document. It is also a gauge for management to see what amount of work needs to be done to deliver the end product.
Rick summed up the matter by saying that levels of edits is a list of editing tasks, organized by levels (such as level 1, 2, 3, etc.) that spells out what, as an editor, you will do in a basic edit, what you will do in a medium edit, and what you will do in an advanced edit. Rick also added that formal definitions on the levels of edit are available in technical editing textbooks and websites. For starters, here’s a definition of levels of edit
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Does levels of edit add value in your editing environment? Have they contributed to your own or your work group’s success in responding to the needs of your customers?
And, here are interesting opinions provided by two chat participants:
- They helped me a lot in agreeing with authors and project managers on exactly what I would and wouldn’t do and how much it would cost them. It prevented after -the- fact hard feelings.
- Due to my workload, I use levels of edit to set priorities for my work. Now, I practically never do copyedits, because my experienced writers should be covering that level, and we have acrolinx IQ to cover some copyediting issues.
In general, do you feel that levels of edit is a potential tool for: a) coping with document deadlines; b) satisfying editing customers; c) achieving quality objectives for technical communication d) educating people on the editing process e) all of the above, or f) none of the above?
Most chat participants responded to this question with either “d” or “e.”
Has anyone used levels of editing for content other than traditional documents, for example, editing online help, content on web pages, technical databases, or code comments that are converted to documentation?
Here are a few opinions from the chat:
- No, but I like the idea!
- Some of our non-document deliverables get run through the same automation tool especially for legal compliance and trademark usage.
Is it typical that due to their workloads/schedules editors end up giving documents a quick “level 1” edit because they don’t have time for anything else?
One of the opinions expressed in the chat was that sometimes, editors deal only with quick, easy fixes at the lowest level (level 1), because speed is the crucial element when you pick that level. There was also another perspective that in tech documents, “tech” is more important than the grammar. Even when I do a level 1 edit, I’m looking for technical problems first and fixing traditional editing concerns only secondarily. Sometimes though the grammar is perfect, the content is inaccurate or is written to the wrong audience, and perhaps there might be factual misstatements, text that doesn’t match the figures/tables, internal contradictions, and the like.
The chat concluded that the discussion and debate on the usefulness and value of levels of editing is likely to continue…