What an editor does...and does not

Not to mention other shenanigans.

I’ve been busy recently editing articles and various other academic work. The folks for whom I edit are generally good people to work with, but even so, I’ve been reminded again of the problems an editor faces. From my colleagues and from my own experiences, I’ve learned what writers can do to avoid having editors turn down their manuscript and thus avoid ending up with a thesis or dissertation or report that isn’t up to snuff or an article that won’t pass review. 

An editor is a professional. Most of us have spent years teaching writing and years editing, working hard to develop the skills necessary to be good editors. A good editor is not born. A good editor is not necessarily a good writer. A good editor doesn’t have to know the subject to do a good job of editing. But an editor is a professional. That means treating the editor with courtesy.

A demanding writer is not a courteous one. Neither is a writer who assumes that an editor is a servant, there for the writer’s convenience. Neither is a writer who assumes that the editor will make everything perfect.

An editor does not sit around in the cloud waiting for someone to turn up who needs editing services. Most of us have plenty of demands on our own time. That means, as with any job, we need to schedule our editing services around other work. Moreover, most of us do not edit for just one person. Often I will have up to five articles waiting for my critical eye. So we need sufficient time to work, and we need to know any deadlines. If you have waited until the last minute to get an editor, expect to be rejected. 

I had one graduate student who emailed me asking me to edit her thesis. I could tell just by the email that the job would be painfully difficult, but I knew the student’s major professor, and I knew that major professor needed the thesis in good shape before he could even begin to go through the thesis to find problems with content. (Imagine having to figure out if a student even knows what she is talking about if the grammar is so bad that you can’t even read it.) The email did not mention a deadline. I sent an email back, tentatively accepting the job—and here’s the kicker—depending on the student’s deadline. I would need a good two weeks, especially toward the end of a semester when I was teaching four writing classes, to do a halfway decent job. The answer came back—the student needed it the next day.

After I picked my jaw up off the floor, I fired an email back. Thanks, but no thanks. That wasn’t just difficult; it was flatly impossible. Not only could I not edit on such a short time frame, the student would not have had time to go through the edits and revise properly. I do not rewrite papers. Ever. Do I ever work with people on a short deadline? Yes, but usually for writers I have worked with before, and usually on something like a grant proposal. And usually for additional pay. Short deadlines mean I have to rearrange my entire schedule. Moreover, short deadlines are one thing; impossible ones are another.

A client inclined to blame the editor for problems getting a paper published doesn’t remain a client for long either. Once, a writer told me that a reviewer had suggested a professional editor, and when told the paper had been professionally edited, had said, “Then the editor doesn’t know much about English”. 

Do you want to know the problem? Three co-authors, none of them native English speakers—and the corresponding author had sent what I had already edited back to the other authors, who had changed the content. The corresponding author had then forwarded the newly changed paper to the reviewers without having the new material edited. 

I am not responsible for material I have not edited. And I resent being blamed for a rejection caused by the writer’s lack of foresight.

So what does an editor actually do? What is an editor responsible for? 

An editor’s responsibilities are specific and limited. The editor’s primary responsibility is to make the writing readable. An editor can work on correct sentence structure, grammar, punctuation, and spelling. An editor can help make writing concise and clear. An editor can help with consistency in format and in usage. An editor can make suggestions about organization and point out if the writer has been redundant. All of this makes it easier to see other problems with the writing, like lack of logic, poor interpretation or argument, or a need for more evidence or definitions. But those other problems are not the editor’s concern. They are the writer’s concern.

An editor does not rewrite and is not responsible for content. Citations are the responsibility of the writer, although an editor may note inconsistencies. In general, organization, interpretation, and ethical use of sources are the responsibility of the writer. An editor will not correct plagiarism (although I have helped with paraphrasing, particularly for those who speak English as a second language). 

A good editor can make the writing concise enough and clear enough that the writer can see problems with content, organization, and interpretation. 

Any and all changes are the writer’s responsibility, even correcting grammar and spelling. The writer must go through the entire document and choose to accept what the editor suggests. And then the writer needs to go through the document again, this time looking at content, interpretation, logic, connections—all of which are in the writer’s purview, not the editor’s.

Yes, there are bad editors out there. But there are far more bad writers who desperately need editors but who won’t do what it takes to get the most out of the editing.

(And now, back to our regularly scheduled programming--after I finish editing.)