Editing as a profession (Part two)

Let me acknowledge, first of all, the messages I received from people who, as it turns out, do the same thing I do: edit documents and manuscripts for a living. Dine Racoma helps local writers from students and professonals to stay-at-home moms provide material to a US website, acting not just as an editor but a go-between; Emil Medina edits press releases that are translated from English to Spanish and French by freelance translators; Rea Uy works as an editorial assistant for a medical journal and just finished editing a tuberculosis handbook. I wrote them back to tell them how good it was to know that they we were not alone; as I noted last week, you hardly ever meet editors, but they’re out there, their magic fingers burnishing the text to its finest sheen.

Now let me pick up where I left off. I’ll begin by listing down some basic resources that I think all editors, at least in English, should have access to.

First and particularly because English isn’t our first language the editor should have some good books on language and style on his or her shelf. These for me should include that thin but weighty book that first opened our eyes to the nuances of English, The Elements of Style by William Strunk and E. B. White, a project that Strunk began in 1918 and that his former student White carried on to a third edition in 1979. Its fourth edition, published after E. B. White’s death, has been updated to account for, among other things, sexism in language. I first came across this book in the 1970s, and never quite forgot its urgings for clarity and simplicity (although I do stray from the path now and then, especially in my fiction).

Every editor should also have a copy of The Chicago Manual of Style, now on its 16th edition, the Bible of professional editors almost since it was first published by the University of Chicago in 1906. This is the book that will tell you everything from where and when to use those pesky commas and apostrophes to how to prepare a manuscript for publication. But like the Bible itself, its prescriptions have been subject to debate and interpretation, over issues that give editors and only editors sleepless nights (the serial comma, for example yes or no?).

And then you’ll need a good dictionary, suited to the kind of English you’ll be editing in (American, British, Australian, and so on). While it would be wonderful to have something on hand like the venerable Oxford English Dictionary (only two full print editions of which have come out, including the original 1928 one), it isn’t very practical to lug all 22,000 pages of it around.

For years, I myself used the American Heritage Dictionary, which I thought was adequate enough and offered interesting information about the origins and usage of words. I say “for years,” because now I rely almost entirely on the built-in dictionary on my MacBook (it comes with the Mac OS as well as on Kindle machines), one based on the New Oxford American Dictionary. I like it because it yields meanings for words as obscure as “adscititious” (a word from my grad-school Shakespeare that I’ve used as a kind of litmus test to check dictionaries by) and as contemporary as “dis” and “def” (if you don’t know what those mean without reaching for the dictionary, you must be over 50, like me). The great thing about living in the 2000s is that all of these references are available online, often for free just Google them or in self-contained software you can load onto your laptop or smartphone.

And since we’re using and writing English as Filipinos, it always helps to acknowledge that we weren’t born to the language and will therefore encounter problems with it, and may need some help. (The same thing applies, of course, even to many native users of English.) You may want to check out Jose Carillo’s trilogy of eminently readable guides to better English, available locally: English Plain and Simple: No-Nonsense Ways to Learn Today’s Global Language, The 10 Most Annoying English Grammar Errors, and Give Your English the Winning Edge (there, I just used the serial comma).          

What kind of problems should editors expect on the job?

Let’s begin with human psychology: people don’t want to be edited. Most people take any revision of what they say or write as a personal affront, a challenge to one’s education or even to one’s authority. It’s a cliché to say this by now, but everyone needs an editor (including me). You may be the sharpest writer on the face of the earth, but if you’re writing in a frenzy at 2 a.m., you’re bound to miss a pronoun here and a past tense there (it’s happened to me many times I decide to transpose everything to a different tense and leave out an annoying straggler).

People used to jargon which is the way certain closed communities use special terms that are perfectly clear to them but not to others (like “myocardial infarction,” “collateral damage,” “network externalities,” and “ceteris paribus” will tend to insist on those terms instead of more easily understandable ones. I’ve often been hired to “popularize” technical texts to render them more accessible to lay readers, and I think I’m pretty good at it, but I’ve sometimes found that after doing what I was contracted to do the client reverted to the original, finding the jargon-free version too strange for comfort.

This brings me to problem clients and problem situations. With editing as with commissioned writing, I try to avoid situations where I will be answerable to a roomful of people say, a board of directors each one of whom will have turf to protect (remember no one wants to be edited). I will deal with someone senior and authoritative enough to take up the cudgels for me.

This leads to another point. Especially within organizations, where the editor is often not a member of a department for that purpose but someone given that task (as well as drafting memos and speeches) because “her English is good,” the editor can easily fall prey to political intrigue, and to dangers far more disastrous than dangling modifiers. Word power is political power at least it seems so to the threatened.

So what do you do when your edits are overruled by someone far less capable, even after quoting 10 sources to prove that “in spite” is two words and not one? Lick your wounds, read a good book, and move on. In spite of everything, you’ve done your level best at your salary range. Let them make fools of themselves if they insist; but if they don’t, make them shine like stars.

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E-mail me at penmanila@yahoo.com and visit my blog at www.penmanila.net.