Re: what to look for in a Tech Editor

["Craig Branham" <ccbranham -at- hotmail -dot- com>]

To go back to the original question, while the editors' general grammatical 
bona fides are important, more important I think is an ability to quickly 
learn the style and usage conventions for publications in the field and 
medium they're working in. When I'm writing my software product training, I 
don't want my high school English teacher giving me advice, for example, I 
want to hear from an experienced technical editor who generally knows the 
audience, knows something about the product domain, and understands the 
exigencies of training presentations and WBT courses.

Ability to do research is essential. Effective editorial research helps an 
editor stay on top of style conventions and trademark usage rules for the 
products the writers are writing about. The documentation has to be 
consistent, in many ways, with the product "story" presented in other IP and 
collateral. Often it falls to the editor (working between and outside 
different content development groups) to notice inconsistencies and to 
suggest a path for resolving conflicts.

Editors need to be able to learn the accepted style guides and project style 
sheets cold in order to decide whether, in particular cases, the writers 
have violated a convention or whether the guides need to be updated to 
account for special cases.

Speaking as a writer, I like editors who are good teachers of style, who 
point out patterns of error and ambiguity to help me head off such problems 
in the future.

As Arthur Plotnik points out, a slightly compulsive personality helps as 
well, though hard-line perfectionism is to be avoided in the interest of 
getting projects finished on time.

Craig B.

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