Читать книгу Working Words - Elizabeth Manning Murphy - Страница 11

2. Who exactly are you, editor?

8

Obviously what follows is my personal view of the editing profession, professionalism in editing, the responsibilities of an editor and the skills an editor ought to possess – in my opinion, that is.

What exactly do we mean by the term ‘editor’?

For the purposes of this book, let’s think of an ‘editor’ as being a member of one of the branches of IPEd or societies of editors around Australia. We do not usually mean a newspaper or magazine editor. That person’s job is to select material for publication, to cull stories that can’t be included and to decide just how much of any particular story will make it to the publication and on which page, in all likelihood.

Such an editor doesn’t always have a great deal to do with checking spelling, grammar, punctuation, style and so on, but is very likely to have more to do with restructuring and even refocusing stories to bring the meat of a story to the most prominent position so that it will ‘sell’ the publication. There are often subeditors to do the detailed checking.

What we generally mean, thinking of the editors who are accredited, or currently seeking accreditation, as professional editors, is a text editor. As text editors we work at various levels of edit, and, if we’re wise, we don’t quote for editing anything until we’ve looked at what level of edit is required for the job. The client frequently has no idea. A common question to me is: ‘What do you charge for editing?’ Well, you can imagine my response. It goes something like this: ‘That depends on what is to be edited, the complexity of the document, the level of edit required, and perhaps whether I’ve done editing for you in the past, among many considerations’.

Mind you, there are magazine editors who also edit text (this would describe me in one of my roles) – they have to because their organisations are small and can’t afford two separate people for the two aspects of the editorial function. However, a lot of our training and interest is in text editing. Perhaps our professional societies should broaden their horizons and include magazine and newspaper editors, and provide more topics at meetings that would interest such people too.

9

Professionalism

Professionalism and accreditation go hand in hand but are not joined at the hip. Editors can be totally professional and not bother about accreditation because they already have a good reputation around town as meticulous editors with professional standards. Accreditation alone can’t make you a better person. It can’t make you more professional in outlook. Your personal standing among your peers is still a good gauge of a professional approach to the job.

Having said that, there is a great deal to be said in favour of accreditation of editors as a necessary step towards full professionalism in editing. It will be the norm in years to come – it will become increasingly difficult to get editing work without accreditation at some level or other. My earnest hope is that accreditation will be a rite of passage from ‘learning to be a professional editor’ to ‘being a professional editor’. But remember that accreditation can’t teach you professionalism – it’s something, like adulthood, that you grow into.

Responsibilities

Much has also been said and written about the responsibilities of an editor. To me, one responsibility is paramount: to make the author’s work look as good as possible. Now, that assumes that you know something about the author, the audience, the subject, and have at least a nodding acquaintance with the author’s reasons for writing the document in the first place. Squiggles in margins or Track Changes can be assumed – as text editors we ought to be able to use any form of editing that the author can relate to – after all, the author needs to understand the changes you are recommending. There are many styles for many purposes. They range from very sophisticated house styles through various professional styles to simple everyday words that clearly tell the author (or printer or publisher or designer) what you recommend. If you work where a particular style of editing is required, it is your responsibility to learn that style and use it.

One responsibility doesn’t get much of a mention – being a teacher. What is the use of all the squiggles and marks if the author has no idea what they mean and therefore ignores them and sends your version off to the printer without question? That author will go away and make all the same mistakes again. If an editor is doing something to someone else’s written work, it seems reasonable to expect that the editor tell them why it’s being done. It’s no good waffling on in esoteric terminology that the client doesn’t follow. They need to know, at their own level of understanding of English grammar and syntax, 10 just what each squiggle means and what was wrong with their original and why the editor’s version is likely to be better for their document. These days, with the benefit of Track Changes, it is easy to include comment notes that explain the changes you are recommending – I have undertaken this ‘teaching’ role alongside the editing job many times.

Of course, you can’t teach unless you are also teachable. The seminars and other teaching aids available to editors ought to be snapped up and devoured by all of us. Over time, we learn new ways of performing our craft; we absorb the basics of editing skills and the grammar, and other aspects of effective writing that support those skills; we also grow in confidence in our own understanding of what we’re doing. Gradually we become better and better equipped to pass on tips to authors and to explain to authors why we are recommending certain changes in their work.

How about this as a catchcry for editors: ‘Be teachable in order to be able to teach. Learn and then go out and teach what you have been taught and are practising’?

And this leads to another, related, responsibility – being a mentor. What’s the difference between a teacher and a mentor? Plenty, but we all have our own ideas about where teaching ends and mentoring begins. To me, a mentor guides and encourages a person and allows them to develop along their own lines. A mentor needs to be able to see beyond the present situation to where the person being mentored (the ‘mentee’, according to the Macquarie Dictionary) is heading in their career. It is the mentor’s role to help the mentee to see stumbling blocks and get over them, to help them develop skills by seeking training, to help them evaluate their own level of expertise by posing insightful questions, and so on – but never by actually doing work for them that they ought to be able to do for themselves.

Mentoring in the editing business is a challenge, an extension of teaching, and perhaps not for everyone. Indeed, a mentor may not even be a highly skilled practitioner – but a mentor will certainly have ‘people skills’. A good mentor knows when to let go and allow the mentee to take off on their own. Teaching, in contrast, means passing on specific skills, actively helping the learner to acquire a set of skills, testing them on their understanding, and making sure that they are competent to use those skills. Of course, teaching can include the philosophy and theory behind whatever practical activity we can think of, but I’ve kept my comments here to what’s mostly required to get a new editor up to speed.

If, as a novice editor, you can find a mentor to guide you while you gain experience and build editing skills, so much the better, but a mentor won’t do the work for you – that’s up to you. There are senior editors in all societies 11 of editors – they are generally very approachable and happy to mentor new editors while they find their feet.

Skills

As in many walks of life, there are some standards in editing practice. We need to adhere to them, but we also need to be flexible. Just exactly what is copyediting, for instance? To me, the term relates to a blurry area on a continuum – I don’t think we can divide up the editing role into three, or four, or five, or fifteen levels of edit clearly, though we have tried to specify three – there are huge areas of overlap; see the Canberra Society of Editors’ Commissioning checklist at http://www.editorscanberra.org/wp-content/uploads/checklist.pdf. It takes time and the development of skills all along the continuum to be able to say that a document requires a copyedit or a substantive edit or a proofread. We need to take advantage of every opportunity to learn all the skills necessary to edit anything, and to find out who or what to refer to when we don’t know something ourselves. Very basic skills should be a given – such skills as understanding the requirements of the Australian standards for editing practice, being very familiar with the conventions of English grammar, knowing at least the most common proofreading symbols, and knowing how to use something like Track Changes so that the author understands our comments. We build on those skills over time.

*

So – who are we? How do we want to appear to the general public? How do we get there? Are we thinking sufficiently far ahead to take into account changes in what others think of as ‘an editor’? A great deal has been written and spoken about differences among the generations. For a senior editor like me, contact with Gen Y and ‘Millennials’ can be quite an experience – we all need to learn respect for each other’s views on work and life. To many of us in the editing profession, particularly the seniors among us, ‘editor’ means one thing: to Gen Y and later generations it may mean something quite different. We need to ask them and take their views on board – they live in the world of smart phones and message apps, and have a totally different view of how to achieve their needs from that of their elders. It can only be good for a profession if it grows as the generations grow and as technology extends into every aspect of life. And it can only be good for a profession if older and younger, more experienced and less experienced editors learn from each other and learn respect for the fundamental values of their profession.