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| Making sense of technical editing | January/February 1999 |
by Theresa Peddle
(Theresa Peddle has a Masters Degree in Language and Professional Writing. She has worked as a technical writer, editor, and project leader. Her pet project is to help Carleton University establish a technical communication degree program. She wrote this letter to her 17-year-old niece in response to questions about technical editing.)
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Hello Megan,
There are only a few technical communications degree programs offered in Canada. I am working on getting a degree program together at Carleton University, but such an adventure takes years. I am meeting with other technical communications graduates to see what is available, and relevant, at Carleton to determine how close they are to having a degree program in technical writing already. If you are interested in working with text as a career, you have to start honing your skills now. Look at everything you write and correct it. Don't ever let poor organization, misspelling or punctuation find its way into your writing. Everything you write is an opportunity to practice your skills. Read everything you can get your hands on--not only what you are interested in, but new stuff, just for the hell of it. Read at least two hours a day. Read the newspaper. Read general news magazines. Read computer magazines. Read articles on the Internet. Go to the library, borrow books of great literature, and read them. Use dictionaries and style guides, such as the Chicago Manual of Style, to become familiar with exceptions and words that are easily mistaken for each other (homonyms) or are easily misspelled. The best sense an editor has to hone is the sense that a word is wrong. This sends an editor to a reference source to |
check the spelling or meaning of the word, and determine if it is used correctly in that context.
The next best sense an editor needs to learn is to sense when a phrase is awkward (especially in technical text when "technobabble" covers for really bad writing). This sends the editor back to the drawing board, usually with the writer, to polish the sentence into a clear, concise rewritten sentence. The only way to be good at picking out bad sentences and rewriting them into good sentences is to become a top-notch writer. This is the first step in becoming an editor. Not all good writers become editors, but a bad writer cannot become an editor. Editing involves precision with language. As I said, if you aim to be an editor, start now by becoming a good writer who cares about text: its organization, clarity, presentation, punctuation and, finally, that nebulous but necessary quality, beauty. There is poetry in words. Even the driest professional text sings when it is well-crafted. Hugs all around, Aunt Theresa The best sense an editor has to hone is the sense that a word is wrong |
