Editing: What?

This page contains an introduction followed by sections on comprehensive editing and levels of edit. At the bottom, you'll find resources.

Created by Delores Farmer and Sherry Southard, August 1999.

Introduction

Editing is often thought of as the process of editors revising and correcting documents. While editors may check for grammatical and spelling errors (microcosm level), they may also review content, organization, style, visuals, and format (macrocosm level). Managing editors coordinate and ensure that company policy is followed. Some editors are responsible for production editing tasks. All of these types of editing must be completed with tact and diplomacy to ensure that authors' work is "useful" to the intended audience and fulfills the documents' purpose. To further complicate matters, documents can be both hard copy and soft copy that includes multimedia and web sites.

Editing is a complex process. Consider some of the following terms and their definitions.

Proofreading-editing that involves checking a document for matters, such as spelling, capitalization, pagination, and formatting, often completed near the end of  the process before a document is published and focusing on have-to-only changes.

Copy editing-editing that prepares a text for printing, including writing precise instructions on a document for typesetters, typists, and graphics staffs before publication.

Technical editing-editing that includes revising and reviewing technical or scientific information.

Online editing-editing completed using a computer.

Production editing-editing that provides instructions for the reproduction and distribution of a document.

Railroad editing-editing completed by two persons for which one person reads aloud from the live copy (most recent version) while the other checks what is read aloud against the dead copy (the draft used to prepare the live copy). Note that as a document goes through various drafts, each draft in turn is live copy and then dead copy. In reading aloud, the reader reads not only words but also punctuation using a shorten version of the name of the punctuation ("cap the" for the word "The" that is capitalized).

Rude's Comprehensive Editing (Substantive Editing)

Carolyn Rude, in Technical Editing, describes comprehensive editing (formerly called substantive editing by Rude, also called macro editing by some) as a multistage process that parallels the writing process. It begins with analysis and planning. The editing itself is likely to require several passes through the document, just as writing requires review and revision. It includes reviews with the writer to ensure that editing has not introduced content errors.

In the analysis and planning stage, the editor considers the document as a whole in its context-as it will be read and used. In well-managed publications companies or departments, the editor participates in the analysis and planning that takes place before the writing begins. As a result, everyone involved in document development shares from the start a common understanding of the document's purpose and goals.

In other environments, comprehensive editing may occur after documents are developed. The editor enters the project at the end. Comprehensive editing, even at this point, still requires analysis and planning. Just as brainstorming, researching, and outlining provide direction for a writer, analysis yields an overview of the editing task.  This overview helps an editor work systematically toward goals that are consistent with the needs of the readers and the purposes of and uses for the document.

Analysis discourages line-by-line reaction to errors and sentence structure. The line-by line approach can work for copyediting, but it does not direct the editor's attention to content, organization, and style nor to the document in use. A sense of the whole document in its context and a concept of what the document seeks to achieve are necessary for the editor to make judgments about content, organization, visual design, and style. As editor, you are more likely to achieve the overall goal of improving the document's usability and comprehensibility if you edit with a plan.

Before you begin to mark a page or edit on the computer screen, Rude suggests that you complete a four-part process that will result in a plan:

1. Analyze the document's readers, purpose, and uses to determine what the document should do and the ways it will be used.
2. Evaluate the document's content, organization, visual design, and style to determine whether the document accomplishes what it should.
3. Establish editing objectives to set forth a specific plan for editing.
4. Review the plan with the writer to work toward consensus.

Comprehensive editing always begins with an analysis of who will use the document and for what purpose. Ideally, this analysis (and comprehensive editing) begins before the writing does, when the document is being conceived. This kind of advance planning directs the development of the document in an efficient and effective way. It also prevents a conflict of wills when the editor's assumptions differ from the writer's. If the editing follows development of a draft, editing requires an evaluation of how well the document in its present form will achieve its objectives.

When completing this process, she suggests you ask these questions:

• What is the purpose of this document?  What should happen as a result of its use?
• Who will read it and why?  Are there cultural variations in readers that will affect comprehension?  Will the document be translated?
• What should readers do or know as a result of reading it?
• What do they already know about the subject?
• In what circumstances will they read it? (In good light or poor? Inside or outside?  While doing a task?)  What equipment or software do they have that might influence how they read and what they can see in the document?
• Will they read it straight through or selectively?
• Should they memorize the contents or use the document for reference?
• What will they do with the document once they have read it? (Throw it away? File it? Post it?  Refer to it again?  Print it from its online version?)
• What are their attitudes toward the subject of the document?  (Cooperative? Unsure? Hostile?)
• What constraints of budget, equipment, or time influence the options for the document?

The analysis represents a basis for evaluating the document. While the purpose of analysis is to determine what the document should do, the purpose of evaluation is to determine how well the document does it. In this evaluation, you systematically review the following features:

• Content: review completeness and appropriateness of information
• Organization: review order of information; signals about the order
• Visual design: review prose paragraphs, list, or tables; paper size; screen display
• Style: review writer's tone or persona; efficiency of sentence structure, concreteness and accuracy of words; cultural bias, grammar usage, punctuation, spelling, and mechanics
• Illustrations: review type, construction, placement

Levels of Edit

Editing can be viewed as a process involving levels of tasks. The tasks completed depend upon factors such as time and money available.

For example, Arthur Plotnik, in The Elements of Editing, identifies three levels of editing.

Light Editing: Correct errors in spelling and grammar. Revise punctuation, numbers, capitalization, and similar matters according to an agreed upon standard of style (style sheet, style guide, style manual). Resolve stylistic inconsistencies. Check statements that seem absurd or libelous.

Medium Editing: Complete light editing tasks. Also rework documents so they are active and concrete. Reorganize paragraphs. Check sources for accuracy.

Heavy Editing: Complete light and medium editing tasks. Rewrite content. Delete information. Verify facts. Confer with authors.

Robert Van Burn and Mary Fran Buehler developed the concept of levels of edit (The Levels of Edit) in 1976, specifically for documents produced at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory of the California Institute of Technology. However, the concept and definitions serve as a basis for editing in other environments and documents.

Their goal was to identify the domains of editorial activity and establish boundaries among them. They classify editorial tasks according to nine types of editing and then group those types into five levels. The levels-of-edit concept indicates tasks editors are to complete as well as providing a strategy for editing according to time, money, and personnel available.

First of all, improved communication among those who must talk about technical editing.  The manager can tell the editor more precisely what he is expected to do under various conditions.  The editor can tell the author what will be, or can be, done to his work, giving the author options that are clearly defined and understandable.

Second, it has taken the cost of editing out of the realm of enraged surprise and put it within the scope of estimation and accountability.  The editor can now define a detailed scope of work and, having done so, can spotlight, and bring to the author's attention, changes to that scope which will affect the cost.  More than this, the editor can offer to the author a choice of costs, based on a choice of edits.

Third, the organization can develop a hierarchy of publications products based upon the various levels of edit, or it can describe different editorial efforts to be applied on the basis of whatever parameters it chooses.

Fourth, discussions about schedules can be kept objective by being related to the specific editorial effort involved, and trade-offs can be considered in exactly the same manner as for an engineering design.

Fifth, the levels of edit provide an ideal instrument for training new editors and for appraising editorial performance, since the editor's duties are specified in concrete terms.  Finally, an author can use the levels of edit to obtain a given level of quality at a lower cost and in a shorter turnaround time by performing some of the editorial functions himself in preparing the manuscript.
 

**For overview of each of the levels of edit (summary of categories), click here. That page provides a link to an in-depth discussion of the tasks involved for each type of edit (editing typology), click here. But to access a pdf file of Levels of Edit referenced below, click here.

****Candace Soderston, in "The Usability Edit: A New Level," adds another level of edit that she calls "usability testing," a method of determining whether a document meets the needs of its users.

Resources

Buehler, Mary Fran. "Defining Terms in Technical Eding: The Levels of Edit Model," Technical Communication 28.4 (1981): 10-15.

Fearing, Bertie. "Railroad Editing." Procedure adapted for use in preparing NCLR (North Carolina Literary Review).

Plotnik, Arthur.  The Elements of Editing: A Modern Guide for Editors and Journalists. Macmillan, 1982.

Rude, Carolyn. Technical Editing. 3nd ed. Allyn & Bacon Series in Technical Communication. Allyn & Bacon, 2001. Especially Chapter 6 (Electronic Editing), Chapter 7 (Basic Copyediting: An Introduction), Chapter 13 (Proofreading), Chapter 14 (Comprehensive Editing: Definition and Process), and Chapter 21 (Editing Online Documents).

Soderston, Candace. "The Usability Edit: A New Level," Technical Communication 32.1 (1985): 16-18.

VanBuren, Robert, and Mary Fran Buehler. Levels of Edit. 2nd ed. Society for Technical Communication, 1991.

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