Re: What to look for in a technical editor

[Gene Kim-Eng <gene -at- genek -dot- com>]

I wish I could say that was my experience, but my last one (with a 
corporate editor who rewrote *everything* that
didn't conform to his personal standards for style) led me to conclude that 
even editors who don't have tech skills
will often behave as if they do - or think they do - if they're working in 
an environment that appears to require them,
and if they're being *hired* by people who don't have both kinds of skills 
- for example, an R&D manager who has
tech skills but poor publications knowledge or a corporate communications 
type who is the reverse - and dumped
on the pubs group, the level of writer (not to mention pubs manager) 
frustration will be enormous.  The truly effective
editors I've worked with have been grammar-and-spelling types who had the 
ability to distinguish between material
that was and was not "technical," and leave the stuff they didn't 
understand to the writers and SMEs to hash out.
In 10 years I've yet to encounter an editor who could truly say they had 
both sets of skills.

Gene Kim-Eng



At 07:42 AM 5/22/2003 -0700, dmbrown -at- brown-inc -dot- com wrote: