- Engineers

Technical Editing in Ten Easy Steps

by Ronald A Brown and Kathy Lawrence

Introduction

We’ve all had work edited. Sometimes we almost dread the process, imagining that the editor is a fierce critic who is just itching to condemn you for sloppy work and inconsistencies. But this is far from true. In reality, the editor is your friend, who wants to work with you to improve your document, whether it’s paper or electronic.

We look first at how you need to consider the document you are editing as a whole, and then focus on the nuts and bolts of the editing process.

Remember that you are editing a document to conform to a certain style and correctness, not to your particular taste!

Note: When you’re collecting together the work to be edited, it is always a good idea to ask for a sample of previously published work. this will often answer your queries without having to go back to your commissioning editor.

So, when editing, the ten things you need to check:

1. Logical flow
Structure: does it make sense, follow a logical order and flow well?

2. Clarity
Does it say what it means and mean what it says?

“Good words are worth much and cost little” George Herbert

3. Conciseness
However good your points, if they are lost in too much verbiage, they will not reach your readers.

“The more you say, the less people remember” Robert Frost

Point 4 onwards

It is standard practice in a book or journal publishing house that editors (and, one hopes, authors) will be supplied with a document explaining the house style – the publisher’s preferences on layout, spelling, use of hyphens etc. This is invaluable in giving a consistent look and feel to a publication, especially when it has been written by many different authors.

If you are starting from scratch, you may not have such a document for reference. This chapter outlines the areas you should think about before you start, so that you can develop your own style sheet. If you’re really organised, you can even distribute it to co-authors before they start, so that they all work to the same guidelines. Saves a great deal of time for everybody.

4. Spelling
Incorrect spelling and poor grammar can confuse the reader. They may even cause them to stop reading – after all, a technical audience will be aware of detail. Make decisions on consistent spelling too – US or UK?

5. Punctuation
Why is this so important? Because even a lowly comma out of place can completely change the sense. Make consistency decisions about style for abbreviations, apostrophes, hyphens and dashes, quote marks and parentheses.

6. Stylistic issues
Headings and styles: Check that the typeface, numbering and style for chapter headings and heading levels are consistent. Check that the headings are always in sequence. Consider how you are going to lay out the contents page.

Numbers and lists: Do you use a comma in the number? say 10,000 or 10 000 or 10000? How do you treat decimal places and scientific units?

Lists: Are lists numbered or bulleted? Check secondary lists too. Are they all consistent?

Tables and figures: Check that numbering is consistent. Check the style of captions and the style of text references.

Trademarks and references: Companies are very particular about how their names and products are trademarked.

References and bibliographies are a complex issue. Probably you will need a footnote on the page for each reference, while bibliographies will be listed at the end of the document. Each publisher tends to have their own rules – so it’s worth checking

Other areas to consider include:

• Introducing new concepts – should these be in bold in the text?
• Names of other publications – often printed in italics, but possibly in quote marks
• Words in another language – generally italicised
• Capitalised words – advice is generally to take them down to lower case as much as possible (without offending trademarks)

8 Queries
There will always be questions that you need to ask of your authors. Devise a system of making a note of them and where they are, and make sure you get a chance to point them out. Perhaps produce forms that can be forwarded to the author

9 Proofreading
In an ideal world, get a fresh pair of eyes to look over the copy once it’s been printed. There are standard markup symbols that are a shorthand for making proofreading corrections clearly and concisely.

10 Maintain contact
If you have doubts or questions, talk to your commissioning editor. If you are editing another author’s work, you may be able to talk to them directly. This will help to avoid wasted effort on your part going down the wrong path, and lessen the offence potentially caused to the author of major editing.