Eye for Editing: The Editor as Teacher

How do you think of yourself in your editing role? Is each document, article, topic, or book by the same author or team of writers an isolated editing task? Does each task seem to start from scratch as if you’d not edited that author’s work before? Or is each subsequent edit you deliver informed by your previous suggestions and comments? Do subsequent documents indicate that the writer “got it the first (or last) time”?

Eye for Editing: Do Not Edit …

You think I’m kidding? Good, because you wouldn’t do something like this, would you? In the throes of final review to meet a draft document deadline, please don’t waste the author’s time—the author who is already stressed and has worked many overtime hours to meet the deadline—by demanding revisions that no one but you will notice. Resist the urge to point out every tiny flaw that presents itself.

Eye for Editing: Caught Between Two Edits

The week after the Summit, I found myself in an interesting position. I have a freelance client for which I do editing exclusively. I also have a full-time contract gig where my job descriptors are writer, editor, designer, trainer, developer, project manager… But primarily, my deliverables are original content as a writer and editorial reviews of the original content of my writer-peers on a team of 2.5 persons.