Natalie Browning Brother Gardner ELANG 350 2 December 2013 Prompt #1
Giving the Gift of Editing With its many responsibilities, an editor I wish to be one day. I want to be an editor. The feeling of taking something good and making it better is such a rewarding and satisfying feeling, and nothing compares to the feeling you have when you know you were able to help someone. These are key feelings I have felt in my experiences editing for work, for school, or for a friend, and I have decided they are feelings I want to have more often. Granted, I realize any job worth doing always comes with trials and hard work. Editing is not always easy, nor is it always an enjoyable process. But to me, the positive experiences and the personal growth and learning that comes from editing far outweighs the difficult parts of the job. I look forward to increasing my skills in copyediting and substantive editing so I am better prepared to use those skills to help others. I can’t think of a better career than editing because it allows me to use my knowledge to help others while I improve my editing skills at the same time. Editors have such a unique responsibility to represent everyone at once; they are the personification of a living balancing act. I’ve learned that they have to be true to everyone while still being true to themselves and maintaining their integrity, which can be a very difficult thing to do. As Gerald Gross explained, “Editors in publishing houses can be perceived as basically performing three different roles, all of them simultaneously. First they must find and select the books . . . to publish. Second, they edit . . . . And third, they perform the. . . function of
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representing the house to the author and the author to the house” (Gross 4). However, editors do so much more than just editing and representing their company. Editors represent the audience as a reader and second opinion for the author, and they represent the author to the audience in editing the author’s work which will have the author’s name on it once published and will be read by many other people. This is a balancing act that I am excited to improve on in my future editing experiences. While there are many different parts to editing, one aspect of editing I thoroughly enjoy is copyediting. It can be tedious, but copyediting is rewarding. I love having knowledge and skills that are so widely needed and used. I have been able to use my knowledge of grammar, punctuation, and usage to improve not only my own papers and assignments but also the work of others. I work as a secretary for the Health Science Department, and the professors in that department are constantly writing tests, informational material about the program, and research papers. I definitely received positive reactions when I told the others in my office that I was an English major with an editing minor. I soon found out why; the professors were thrilled to be able to give assignments to someone with that background and training because they knew I’d take the job seriously and do my best with the knowledge I had. I could point out misplaced modifiers, revise comma usage, and suggest words that could improve clarity and meaning. I was happy to be able to explain that I removed an and because “a semicolon is most commonly used between two independent clauses not joined by a conjunction to signal a closer connection between them than a period would” (Chicago 325).Though I was not an expert in Public Health Administration or Epidemiology, I did have experience in grammar and usage of the English language that I was able to offer to them, and that was a fabulous feeling.
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Improving clarity in style is another aspect of editing that I enjoy and that I feel is so crucial to the overall impression and success of a piece of writing. Joseph M. Williams writes, “Some writers plump up their prose, hoping that complicated sentences indication deep thought . . . Others write graceless prose . . . because they are seized by the idea that good writing must be free of the kind of errors that only a grammarian can explain. . . .Others write unclearly because they freeze up . . . . But the biggest reason most of us write unclearly is that we don’t know when our readers will think we are unclear, much less why” (Williams 6). It is true that we understand our own writing better than others because we understand our own intentions in our writing, while others may not. This is why the editing process is so important. As a trial-run audience, I am able to give authors a second opinion and help them see how I understand that piece of writing. Then, we can go from there. The authors can decide whether or not my impression is the kind of impression that the target audience might have, and they can then decide if that is what they want. The experiences I’ve had with asking authors questions to clarify has helped me to see different perspectives and has helped those I’ve worked with gain new perspectives and better understand what they want to say and how. A quality I have that is important to have as an editor is the quality of kindness. When an editor is making changes to someone else’s work, that editor is dealing with something personal to that author. The author chooses what and how to write that work; if an editor is insensitive, aggressive, or sarcastic, it can greatly harm the author-editor relationship. In editing, I try to be sensitive to the feelings of authors, being honest without sounding harsh or critical of them as a person. When occasions arise in which I don’t fully understand where the author is coming from,
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I remind myself that the author had a purpose in writing what he or she did and that I need to be mindful of that and ask questions. I once had an experience in a creative writing class that really opened up my eyes to this issue. For one of our assignments we were given a group of prompts and were told to choose one. I chose a prompt to write a humorous analogy about dating at BYU. Immediately, idea after idea popped into my brain about comparing different types of daters to different types of animals in a zoo, and I wrote furiously, excited about my idea that I found so funny and clever. To my dismay, however, my intentions and meaning did not come across as clearly to others as I had hoped it would. While several of the students understood the analogy as I did and thought it was hilarious, there were a couple students who felt trapped by how they felt I had described or labeled them, and they seemed quite offended. This led them to make rude and sarcastic remarks during the workshop, and when they addressed me they were unkind and cold in their tone, facial expressions, and mannerisms. Because of this, my group editing workshop was a very painful learning experience and I ended up throwing the whole paper away and choosing a new prompt for the final draft. I didn’t even want to face editing that paper after the experience I’d had with my fellow classmates and editors. Looking back at this experience from an editor’s perspective, I’ve realized that there may be times when I edit something I either don’t fully understand or don’t agree with. When this happens, I need to make sure that I am aware of the author’s feelings while asking questions because that author may not have thought of all the different ways the audience might understand that piece of writing. It is much more helpful and productive to express ideas and opinions honestly and courteously rather than attack someone or their writing. When I edit, I try to be honest and open with how I understand the meaning of a piece, but I also strive to make helpful comments that
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are open and inquisitive so my author realizes that I do not proclaim myself to be superior to him or her in any way. My job as the editor is to edit, not grade, and through using the knowledge I’ve gained with genuine kindness I can make a difference in the lives of writers and readers at the same time.
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Works Cited
Ed. Gerald Gross. Editors on Editing: What Writers Need to Know About What Editors Do, 3rd ed. New York: Grove Press, 1993. Print. The Chicago Manual of Style, 16th ed. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2010. Print. Williams, Joseph M. and Joseph Bizup. Style: Lessons in Clarity and Grace, 11th ed. Boston: Pearson Education, Inc., 2014. Print.