Melanie Spiller and Coloratura Consulting
Copyright 2020 Melanie Spiller. All rights reserved.
The Editorial Process
Melanie Spiller and Coloratura Consulting
When you send your precious text off to an editor, do you worry about what will happen to it? Here’s what
to expect, as far as process.
There are several kinds of editors who may be involved with your text. Most text passes through a
developmental editor, a copyeditor, and a technical editor. Other flavors of editor have less impact on the
actual text, so you need not feel anxious about them.
First, let’s set the record straight: as the author, you are expected to be the technical expert. You may or may
not write well about it; that’s irrelevant. You were asked to contribute your work because of your technical
expertise. The technical editor has been asked to participate because his level of expertise meets or exceeds
yours. In most cases, because it’s your name on the text, developmental and copy editors let your version
stand if you and the technical editor disagree. A technical editor who works for the manufacturer gets to be
right even if you’re absolutely certain that they’re not. Take up disagreements with the technical editor in
such a case, and don’t make your poor editor into a mediator. Please be polite. It is not solely your income at
stake. Please respect that the manufacturer’s technical expert has the reputation of the manufacturer hanging
over him. You don’t have to accept non-technical changes from this person, though.
Second, let’s continue to set the record straight: no matter how well you write, no matter how much you’ve
written, and no matter how much work you’ve done as an editor, you are not the expert on grammar, style,
punctuation, or word usage. Your developmental or copy editor is the expert on these things. It doesn’t even
matter if you have more developmental editing experience than they do. You have been hired to write, and
they have been hired to edit. Their role is to be your first objective reader and to impose some rules on your
work that you may not always agree with or see because, as the author, you are very close to the work.
Everyone needs an editor—even (maybe especially) an editor. Believe me; the scariest thing I do in my work
is send these blogs out into the great blue nowhere without anybody else reading them first. (And some of
you exhibit great glee in correcting me. Ahem. Happily, your corrections are not always accurate, proving
my point about tech editors.)
Let’s assume that you wrote your text using Microsoft Word. (I do most of my work in Word, and this is an
Office blogger site, so…) Word has a lovely Track Changes feature that the editors turn on so that you can
see who made what change. In some cases, usually to meet a stiff deadline, the editors accept their own
changes and only show you controversial changes this way. Typically, editors don’t like to do that, because
they may be changing the voice or meaning in a way that you might find objectionable, and that you might
read past if it wasn’t in a pretty tracked-changes color.
Typically, a developmental editor looks at the work first. (In the case of magazine publishing or Web
publishing, most often you get a developmental editor and a copy editor rolled into one. If you are very
unlucky, this person could also be your technical editor. This is unlucky because you lose an objective
arbiter in the case of a disagreement.) The developmental editor may recommend changes in voice (whether
you’re chatty, academic, very terse, or whatever), changes in structure, or help you focus your audience. You
may get some suggestions on how to be clearer and you may get some fairly technical questions if your
arguments are not linear. The developmental editor adds figure captions or points out that you need to, and
corrects template usage in most cases. This editorial pass also looks at whether your images have
inappropriate elements (like real phone numbers) and that they are images of what the text describes.
Then, a technical editor looks at code, images, and step lists to make sure everything works the way you say
it does. Sometimes the technical editor can see the developmental editor’s changes, and sometimes they
can’t. The technical editor should not make text changes that do not correct technical issues. Making non-
technical corrections creates work for the developmental or copyeditor, who is the actual expert on non-
technical text. You (the author) don’t have to make non-technical text changes from the technical editor
unless you like them. If they are not grammatically correct, of course, the copy editor won’t accept your
change or the technical editor’s.
In most cases, an editor of some sort combines the efforts of the developmental and technical editors so you
only have to look at one corrected document. Then, the document, all marked up, is returned to you.
Go through the returned document and respond to everything using the Track Changes feature. If you agree
with the technical editor, you can just make a comment saying “yes” or “thank you” or something. Most
likely, the technical editor won’t see these comments, but it’s a way of letting the next non-technical editor
know that you concur. If you don’t concur, you need to be explicit in your comment about how you don’t
agree so the non-technical editor can decide what action to take next. For the non-technical changes, not
commenting is taken as agreement, but you want to comment if you disagree. Don’t just say no. Many
editors can be reasonable if you make a good argument. Answer absolutely every asked question from any
editor by adding or changing text. Add or change text to the document using Track Changes—don’t put it in
a comment, or the editor will end up trying to figure out how to put it into text, and you may not like the
results.
When you return this document to the editor or the publishing entity, the next editor is probably a
copyeditor. (If your work needs a lot of help, it may go back to the developmental editor first.) This editor
examines the changes and accepts the ones that comply with standards of style, grammar, punctuation, and
word usage. This editor examines any debates, makes a decision (based on who is the expert in the
circumstance), cleans all the comments and changes out, and prepares the document for publication.
That’s pretty much it. In a future blog or two, I’ll talk about what an editor does to your text and how to tell
if you’ve got a bad editor.