EDITINGWITHSTYLE.COM: NOTES ON EDITING - Chapter 1
By David McHam
Chapter One
An Introduction
The act of communicating in print involves gathering, sorting and distributing information. Printed information must be assumed to be correct. Mistakes of any kind cause the information to become suspect.
The writer of the material to be printed should be able to present the information in such a way that concerns over its form and accuracy do not arise. If this happens, the material won't need much attention and will float through the copy-to-print process. This is possible in part because of the training and knowledge of the writer. Among other considerations, the writer will be sufficiently grounded in the basics of the language to present his or her thoughts clearly and accurately. Of course, the subject matter must also be accurate and clear.
Editors are inserted in the process to provide critical judgment. Editors who have a grasp of the intricacies of language may be able to catch errors or mistakes. If no errors are found, the editor can provide a stamp of approval on what the writer has done.
Editors can improve copy only to the extent to which they are qualified. Changing copy for the sake of change is not good editing. Editors must have a reason for making changes. Changes should improve the copy. One way to say this is: “Editing is the art of improving copy without messing it up.”
Writing and editing are closely related. Writers and editors have the same goal: that of communicating. Both writing and editing involve making constant decisions about language. A justification must be found for every word, for every way of handling information.
The better grounded writers are in the basics of the language, the better able they are to present clear, accurate copy. The same applies to editors. Qualified editors can help writers achieve the goal of effective communication.
How are these qualities acquired? Editors may be taught, they may learn through observation or reading, or they may pick up ideas so naturally that they don't remember the origin of those ideas.
In the beginning, would-be editors can develop bad habits as easily as they develop good habits. Having their work challenged by teachers or trained editors is helpful in teaching young editors how to edit well.
Good editors must have self-confidence. They build self-confidence by having their work critiqued by people who are better at editing than they are. In this way, they learn about standards of excellence. They learn what actions need to be made and how to justify those actions. Justification involves editing for a reason, not as a result of whim. Good editors deal in knowledge and logic.
The Editing Process
Raw copy can seem forbidding. Editors must have a system for reading the copy. Such a system allows editors to break the editing process down into smaller, manageable areas. When editors look at a mark of punctuation, a word or a construction they can check what the copy says against what the editors know to be the acceptable way of handling that particular information.
This process requires mental discipline. For as long as necessary, the editor must concentrate on the material at hand. Every editor develops his or her best approach to this process. Here's a suggested way of going about it:
1. As you read each sentence, pay attention to areas that you know should be checked. Ask yourself as you go, is this comma in the right place, is that the correct way to spell that word, does this sentence conform to acceptable patterns of structure? If changes need to be made, make them at that point. Don't tarry. If you need to check something further, make some kind of small mark to help you remember that additional checking is necessary.
2. Go back to the places you have marked and do whatever you have to do to straighten them out. If you need to look up the word in a dictionary, do that now. If you need to check something in the stylebook, do that now. If you weren't sure about a fact, check it now if possible. Remove your marks as you go.
3. Read over the copy again. This second reading should be more thorough. Look at it with a sense of detachment. When you have finished reading and when all the areas you needed to check have been checked, go on to something else. You can proceed to other tasks with assurance that what you have edited so far has been edited to the best of your ability.
You are probably editing on a video display terminal. But in the event you are editing on the copy itself, a suggestion: Make your improvements as clearly and neatly as possible. The purpose of editing is to prepare the copy for the typesetter. The editor is the last stop. When the copy leaves the editor, all questions should have been answered.
Implicit in this approach is the understanding that you won't change anything unless you have a reason to make that change. You will need to have a mental checklist of areas with which you should be concerned. You are constantly comparing what you read to that mental check list.
Here are some of the specific items you will want to have in your catalog of areas to evaluate: style, spelling, vocabulary, word usage, grammar and structure, punctuation, facts. Your catalog won't have a set number of areas of concern. With experience you won't even be conscious of working from such a list. You will begin to notice that when you have seen this particular situation before it has sometimes been incorrect.
Work on speeding up the editing process. Push yourself. Don't go too slowly. Slowness works against concentration.
When in doubt, consult a supervisor. Depending on the circumstances, you may need to talk with the writer. This would be appropriate when fact situations are in doubt.
Editing With Good Sense
Anyone who is going to be an editor can prepare for the inevitable: whoever handles copy makes mistakes. In learning to edit, students should train themselves to make as few mistakes as possible. One way of doing this is to learn to scrutinize every mark of punctuation, every word, every aspect of the composition. Finding mistakes and correcting them is what is expected of the editor.
Editors need not brag about their success in editing. Neither do they need to berate the people who make the mistakes as in: “Hey, stupid, you goofed.” If editors need to say anything, they might make a gentle statement that a proper name is spelled incorrectly, or a word isn't used the way it should be or that our style is to use a comma there.
Careless or capricious editing can be as bad as no editing at all. Bad editors will overlook areas that need work while playing with areas that either had nothing wrong with them or were a matter of preference. In matters of preference, the writers' preferences must prevail.
To repeat: the editor should not impose her or his preferences on the writer. Otherwise the relationship between writer and editor erodes. Erosion begins when editors are unable to justify the changes.
Caution and restraint are the best approaches to editing. This applies especially when writers have a pronounced style. A change can often affect the cadence of a sentence. Editors must maintain the style in which the writing was written. They look for the tone of the material and edit with such sensitivity that a writer's individual approach isn't lost.
Editors can affect copy in one of four ways: They can make it better, make it worse, make changes that don't make the copy better or worse, or make no changes at all. The goal should be to maintain the quality that is in the writing and to fix only what needs to be fixed. Good editors make copy better, and they make changes with that in mind.
Editing involves the repetitious application of critical judgment on all matters, large and small. Good editors pit their knowledge and ability against the copy. The better prepared the editors are, the less likely they are to fail. Succeeding gives editors satisfaction. The only reward for good editing comes when editors know they have done a good job.
Writing is a creative process, editing a critical one. Good editors understand that acceptable writing may occur in any one of several ways. Young editors must overcome the temptation to edit the way they would have written. While the editors' prerogative may be to change, that prerogative does not extend to re-creation. Editors must have a reason for their every action.
By establishing a checklist, editors will look for specifics. If a change is made, the reason for that change will have been determined in advance. In this way editors are able to separate what ought to be changed from those areas that editors shouldn't worry about. When editors have more experience, the obvious mistakes will jump out. The more subtle mistakes may still slip through. The nature of subtle mistakes is such that they slip by everyone, including experienced editors. That danger is always present.
Editors should have a standard from which they work and they should be clear as to how they created that standard. This standard should include the basics, such as style, spelling, etc. Editors should be cautious when dealing with colloquialisms or regionalisms. Language shouldn't be forced into a straitjacket.
Editors can and should be pedantic about appositives, about the
apostrophe (its/it's), about hyphens in modification. But editors shouldn't be dogmatic about the way writers write that is different from the way they, the editors, would write.
Editors-in-training must have the right attitude toward learning to be good editors. What seems trivial to one person may be important to another. No one can persuade another to adopt such an attitude. Editing is essentially a discipline. Extreme concentration is required.
Professionalism is
more than education,
more than experience,
more than training.
Professionalism is
a state of mind.
--- Lilla Ross, Florida Times-Union
A Broader Scope
Working as an editor may involve more than editing copy. Here we’re discussing all kinds of editing. Editors oversee the process of getting material from copy to print. This could include taking care of typesetting and choosing a printer. Photographs and illustrations have to be assembled. Layouts must be devised. Headlines have to be written. The project has to be supervised along the way.
In theory, whatever is to be printed must be edited: advertisements, company publications, brochures, news releases, wire service copy, magazines, books, newsletters, newspapers, annual reports. Even radio and television news copy must be edited. Opportunities in editing range so broadly that any list would be limiting. Editing is as necessary in advertising and public relations as it is in news/editorial work.
No typical organizational chart exists. In many situations, one or two people may write, edit, write headlines, take care of design, oversee typesetting and printing, handle distribution. The exception, though, is the rule. In many situations, the copy process is a group effort. The pattern is that every organization that handles copy does it the way it thinks best.
Editors work for other people we will call supervisors. These supervisors have a great deal of experience or limited experience. The supervisors may handle people well or ineffectively. Sometimes they are great teachers. Sometimes they think they know more than they do. If they haven't had the benefit of good teaching or haven't worked for good editors, they may not have high standards. Or their standards may simply be different. Sometimes good young editors can find the situation awkward when they have to work for someone who isn't as prepared as they are.
People with talent must hope that they will be recognized by people who have talent themselves. When this match occurs, working can be fun and rewarding. Young people have to prepare themselves for such opportunities. Young editors who are ill-prepared will have a difficult time working with supervisors who have a good grasp of the editing process.
Changes in typesetting and printing have not affected the basics of editing. Whatever the impact of technology, the importance of editing has not lessened. Training and skill are still involved. This skill may be performed at a word-processing terminal or on paper. Copy still must be processed, and the person responsible for processing is an editor. Technology has not eliminated the need for editing. Because of technology, the future may hold expanded opportunities for editors in the processing of information.
Proofreading
Proofreading changes should be limited to glaring errors. The time to make structural changes in the copy is before the copy is set in type. Making changes in the type can be time-consuming, costly and may result in additional mistakes.
Proofreading is an entirely different and separate process from editing. Corrections are made in the body of the copy during editing. Proofreading corrections are made in the margins. Some of the editing and proofreading symbols are similar, but many are different.
Among the mistakes that must be caught during proofreading are misspelled words, wrong division of words, transposed letters/words/lines, faulty alignment, typographical errors in punctuation, wrong fonts, uneven spacing between words and lines, and missing or incorrect slugs or guidelines. Obviously, incorrect information must be caught at any time, even in proofreading.
Some definitions related to proofreading: Proving type – and that is a wonderful term that has unfortunately fallen out of use – in its original form involves working with a galley proof. If the page of type has been put together, that's called a page proof.
Copyright: David McHam
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