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Subject:Re: job title nomenclature on biz cards From:"Bonnie Granat" <bgranat -at- granatedit -dot- com> To:"TECHWR-L" <techwr-l -at- lists -dot- raycomm -dot- com> Date:Fri, 20 Aug 2004 02:29:38 -0400
With regard to technical editing, I'd like to say this, which I just
wrote to a friend offline and want to share with the whole list (my
correspondent was saying that most technical editors he knows don't run
the application or know the content at all):
Anyway, I'm TE of a different stripe, I guess. If I'm editing software
documentation, it's really pointless to just correct grammar and
punctuation and spelling -- and it's impossible, too, to do just that
with any confidence that one is not harming the document.
How in the world am I to help the writer convey the meaning of something
if I don't know what the writer is actually trying to convey?
Editing without understanding the content is crazy, in my opinion.
Without understanding the content, certain things will *seem* wrong,
certain commas will appear to be misplaced, and those items will be
changed --- but they will have been correct, and I will have done a very
bad thing to a very good document!
A good technical editor knows this. Anyone who is simply reading for
spelling, grammar, and punctuation may be an *editor* -- but she is not
a *technical* editor, which is what I am.
If I ever sound any more like Plato than I do right now, I promise to
drown myself forthwith.
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