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I sometimes talk with other professionals who are loathe to work with an editor. Their experiences validate those feelings. Past forays find that an editor has not only worked in a disconnected manner, but also made them feel inadequate and incompetent as writers of technical content.
Rather than being adjunct, a good editor is a writer’s collaborator, working to improve the writer’s ability to communication clearly. An editor:
- Works to ensure that the writer’s document is well organized and complete, and brings clarity and cohesion to the writer’s work.
- Copy edits the text to ensure it is correctly written, with attention to grammar, punctuation, mechanics, and word choice.
- Ensures that company policies as well as any document requirements (such as with an RFP response) are complied with.
- Advocates for the readers to make sure the information is accurate and correct, and can be easily understood and acted upon.
I explore the role of editor more deeply in my latest Toward Humanity blog post, “An Editor: Your First Reader and Collaborator”. (Download the PDF.) In the post, I discuss how a good editor acts as just that, an editor (and not a second writer), working within a writer’s framework to improve their writing. Tell me what you think.
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Social media has become so ubiquitous in the lives of all of us, it threatens to take over our very existence. In some cases, it has! Engaging in the social media stratosphere—especially in the three business arenas of LinkedIn, Twitter, and Facebook—seems to occupy one of two dichotomies during our busy business days: either we allow it to nit-pick away our day or we can’t find the time for it. I don’t recommend subscribing to either position.
After being asked by many people how best to participate in—and control—social media, I decided to conjure up some thoughts. Then I wrote about them in a recent column for Intercom magazine, “Making the Time for Social Media”. Download a PDF of my column. Hope my ideas prove fruitful.
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