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Editors: What Are They Good For?

by Lily Splane

Editors take more hiss and bile than anyone in the publishing industry. It goes with the territory. I suspect this is so because writers (neophyte and seasoned alike) do not understand what exactly it is that an editor does, or why.

Many editors are or were writers. Editors know about writing. They know what works and what doesn’t—and how to fix what doesn’t. Besides typesetting and laying out this newsletter every month, I also edit what goes in it. Unfortunately, the word edit often provokes visions of bleeding red markers, scissors, and even butcher knives slashing across pages with perverse abandon.

Editing is not synonymous with cutting, though cutting is sometimes a necessary part of an editor’s job. Editing entails a great deal more than just cutting. Editors have to check for dozens of problems—oftentimes all at once.
Spelling, grammar, and punctuation top the list. Paragraph structure, logical sequence, and organization are equally important. These things are the basic mechanics of writing.

Editors also look for clarity, economy, internal consistency, tone, voice, and the author’s intended meaning. When these things are weak or absent, editors do their special magic and make the writing work.

Redundancy, fluff, wordiness, puffery, and unnecessary digressions all have to be dealt with to assure that the integrity of the writing is the best it can be; these things are usually rewritten or cut to strengthen the writing. Oftentimes in writing, less is more.

Statements of fact not generally known to the average reader are tricky—the source must be cited or the statement will be omitted. Editors—and readers—value factual accuracy.

Though we have not had to deal with it yet, space constraints often call for serious cutting. As SAMEDA grows and the newsletter gets bigger, space considerations may play a role in my editing duties. For now, don’t worry about it.

My job here as your editor is less demanding than some of the editing I do on books slated for publishers and distributors. In a small newsletter, I have more freedom to leave things “as is.” The author’s original words are preserved more often than not.

Editors make writers look good—sometimes better than they actually are. Editors do not edit to power-trip or to get revenge. Editing is a passionless, logical activity. The writing is nearly all that matters to an editor. Sometimes, editors forget that people are behind what they disassemble and rearrange. We get tunnel vision. We seem insensitive. But keep in mind that when the writing shines, the author gets the applause. Isn’t well-crafted writing what we all really want to read?

Writing begins as a collection of discrete units—characters, words, phrases, sentences, paragraphs—that gradually build into a single whole. When it all comes together seamlessly, it flows. Flow is what makes the writing an effortless, comfortable read. Ensuring the reader’s pleasure while preserving the writer’s voice is the real reward for an editor.

Popular consensus is that editors are just one rung up from the bottom feeders of the publishing industry—literary critics. We are the obsessive-compulsive nit-pickers of the writing world. An editor will be the first to notice something wrong—even standing in line at the grocery store reading the back of someone’s T-shirt—and want to fix it.

“Hey, mister,” I say, tapping the stranger gingerly on the shoulder while reading the printing on his shirt. “Shouldn’t anal retentive have a hyphen in it?”

May we always be free to create good stuff together,

—Your editor, Lily

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