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What Makes a Good Editor?March 24, 2008 This is a slightly revised version of something I posted to Copyediting-L (aka CE-L) this morning, with the subject line "What makes a good editor." I'm finishing up a rush job that's going down to the wire -- has to get to the Vineyard Haven post office by 4 p.m. tomorrow in order to be in New York on Wednesday. It's so down to the wire that I rescheduled an 11 a.m. Tuesday appointment for 11 a.m. Friday. The reason it's so down to the wire is not that I'm slow or the deadline was unreasonable. The reason it's so down to the wire is that I went off-island for almost three days to see Janis Ian in concert and Rozzie Kopczynski in Fiddler on the Roof, and last Thursday I took a friend off-island for a battery of eye doctor appointments and (thanks to a late-running appointment, a missed turn, and a ferry too full to get on standby) we got back several hours later than expected. Oh yeah, and since Saturday I've had a young dog in residence -- more about him later. Why make a tight deadline even tighter by taking nearly two hours out to compose a short essay that no one is waiting for? Mainly because the thing was ready to hatch, and I wanted to know what I was thinking at the moment about the editor's trade and my place in it. Much CE-L discussion is about editorial nuts-n-bolts: style queries, usage queries, and "What should I do with this sentence?" queries. Sometimes, though, it grapples with, or at least dances around, general issues -- the kind of stuff some editors think about when they aren't on deadline, and even (some of us) when we are. What do editors do? What makes a good editor? Why don't editors get paid more? These questions don't have pat answers, or maybe they don't have answers at all, but neither do most of the biggies. It's the grappling and dancing with with them that makes editing, and life in general, interesting. My post grew out of a nuts-n-bolts discussion about commas, specifically the commas that go around non-restrictive phrases and clauses, and about whether a particular phrase was restrictive or not. This discussion had gone on long enough that it was no longer just about commas; it was also about authorial intentions, the editorial mind, and the author-editor relationship. Someone claimed that the use of commas was "undebatable"; someone else pointed out that this was odd since we'd been debating it for several hours. I'd already contributed several two-centses to the discussion and was trying not to jump in again (that deadline, you know), then toward the end of a good post on the subject one CELmate posed this question: "How many people here have written something that's going to be edited and, while writing a particular sentence (after much deliberation) have thought to themselves, 'The editor is going to fight me on this one' and so you marshal your defenses before you send it off to the editor?" And I was off: Yeah, but the editor rarely fights me about that one -- she finds something I totally missed and points out that it isn't clear or doesn't work, then I whack myself on the forehead. It works both ways: When I'm editing, I'll come to a snarl and as I start to untangle it I'll think, "The writer is going to fight me on this one." This is my cue to pay excruciatingly close attention to not only what the words say but what the writer probably meant and how the words might be read by a reasonably alert member of the intended audience. What ensues is a discussion between Me the Editor and Me the Writer's Advocate, and by the end of the discussion (which usually takes only a few seconds) Susanna usually knows whether to change, stet, or query. How do I know this? Damned if I know. Maybe more important: how can I teach it to novice editors. Damned if I know that either, but I suspect I can't. I'm a pretty good editor, but though I can identify crucial mentors and key experiences I've had along the way, I can't say that anyone or anything "taught" me to edit. Learning to edit is a process of self-education, I think, and in that process the self is key. I think about this whenever certification or editorial qualifications come up. Certification programs are almost inevitably based on tests, and good tests can measure knowledge of a subject area, but can they measure editorial ability or aptitude? Someone who tests high on knowledge of English grammar, usage, punctuation, and spelling might be, or have the potential to become, a good editor -- or s/he might turn out to be the editor from hell. Tests on particular styles -- Chicago, APA, MLA, etc. -- strike me as pretty useless unless the objective is to pick the candidate who can best edit a particular job right this minute. A capable editor won't take long to get up to speed in an unfamiliar style -- because a capable editor knows enough to keep the appropriate style manual open on her lap or near at hand at least until she's mastered the style in question, and probably a lot longer than that. This is what I look for in an editor, and what I aspire to offer as an editor. Can it be tested for? Damned if I know, but I doubt it. Editorial capability comprises a bundle of delicate balances any of which can tip the wrong way in the right (or wrong) circumstances. Humility (an editor knows what she doesn't know) balanced with a confidence in her convictions that can look a lot like arrogance. Perfectionism coupled with flexibility. Excruciating attention to detail combined with awareness of the big picture. Simultaneous respect for authorities and willingness to question, argue with, and contradict them. Some days I wonder how anyone dares hire an editor at all: you don't really know whom you're engaging to work on your manuscript, or your author's manuscript, and the disaster potential from a real mismatch is high. Other days it seems that when I start a job I'm usually not qualified to edit it, but when I finish it I'm the best editor for the job. So maybe a good editor is one who has an intimate knowledge of the relevant language(s) and who is willing and able to learn what each job has to teach her. CE-L provides endless opportunities both to learn more about the English language (and a bit about other languages as well) and to identify and develop those other unmeasurable characteristics that make up the editorial mind. It works in mysterious ways. When you ask a question, you often get several answers, some of them contradictory. This is good. For an editor, getting the right answer is often less important than knowing how to evaluate various possibilities. Other people will post something and you'll find yourself arguing with it or puzzling over it, sometimes on and off for weeks. This is good too. Editorial questions are rarely settled once and for all. Occasionally people will post things that make you wonder about their qualifications, their judgment, or even their sanity. Even this is good, in part because you'll have jobs and clients that make you wonder too, and a little practice on the side never hurts. In part it's good because the things that piss you off work like magic mirrors. You can look into them and see what you might become like if you get too set in your ways, or maybe what you used to be like before you saw the light. If someone can devise a certification program that can do all of the above on an ongoing basis and do it for free, hell, maybe I'll take it. ;-)
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