Results of Interviewing Editors: Best Practices, Challenges, Insights

摘要

Editing is a primary skill for technical communicators, a skill we ought to research thoroughly so that we might perform it efficiently and effectively. However, the majority of literature in the field is lore, defined as "knowledge of what 'works' in a classroom or work situation or as wisdom gained through experience. However, most published accounts . .. do not include any empirical tests of the strategies involved" (MacNealy 1999, 8). Talented editors have provided descriptions of how editing ought to be conducted, from snapshots of their practice to entire books describing editing procedures (Dragga and Gong 1989), but few are substantiated with research. In this study, we built upon the few editing studies that provide research by interviewing multiple editors about their practices, comparing and contrasting their experiences with editing studies that have been performed previously.