Upcoming Webinar on 28 February: Basics of Editing & Proofreading

We’ve invited the presenters of our webinars to provide a guest post talking about their upcoming presentation. We hope this will provide even more information to potential attendees and give a glimpse into what you can expect to learn. Today’s guest post is by Ruth E. Thaler-Carter, who presents the webinar Basics of Editing & Proofreading on Thursday, 28 February, from 4:00-5:00 PM EST (GMT-5).

Being an editor or proofreader—especially an editor—is not just a profession; it’s a responsibility. It isn’t enough to have great skills in grammar, punctuation, usage, and spelling, although those are essential; you also have to develop tact and insight. An editor is responsible not just for fixing what might be wrong with a document or project, but for keeping the author’s feelings in mind in the process. You can’t just slash and bash your way through a manuscript, no matter how awful it might be. You have to remember that every document is somebody’s baby, somebody’s life’s work, somebody’s cherished creation.

If you want your clients or employers to respect your editing and proofreading work, that is an important perspective to keep in mind. People respond to edits that are made based on strong skills but presented with an acknowledgement that the writer and editor are partners in making the material better and more accessible to readers or users. They resent changes that seem to be arbitrary and imply that the writer is a careless, sloppy idiot. That means a good editor suggests, queries, nudges—rather than attacks, insults, demands.

Another vital key to being a good editor or proofreader is to understand the difference between the two tasks. They have separate roles and belong to different parts of the publishing process. And just to make it more complicated, editing has a number of different levels, from a light line or copy edit to a much-deeper substantive or developmental edit. A lot of employers, colleagues, and clients don’t understand the difference between editing and proofreading, or between levels of edits, and will ask for editing work at proofreading rates or on proofreading deadlines. That means it’s the editors and proofreaders who have to understand the nature of the work, maintain the line between one and the other, and sometimes educate others about it.

We’ll talk about these and other details in Basics of Editing & Proofreading, and I’ll do a few more posts here on the editing profession as well.