Technical Writer

Editing is a skill I rate more necessary than writing ability for technical writers. Many people can write well. Far fewer have time or the inclination to edit what they have written, even though it’s a rare first draft that can’t be improved with a little editing.

Some people never get the knack of editing at all. Others can edit another person’s work, but not their own. A lot of people can tidy up their own text if they put the writing away for a while.

Technical writers don’t have the luxury of sitting on their work for the weeks and months it takes until they can look at it with fresh eyes. They have deadlines, products to deliver. They have to rewrite their own work as soon as they have completed it.

As most writers know, that’s quite difficult.

Likewise, most tech writers can’t rely on someone to edit their work for them. They must do the initial edits themself.

Anyone who reviews their work should not have to correct basic problems like structure, or grammar, or spelling, or format. They certainly should not be called on to make major changes to a document’s content or style.

A tech writer whose work constantly requires major editing is as bad as no writer at all.

So what skills does an editor require?

They need the basics of good writing—spelling, grammar, tense and style—but they also need to be able to look at writing they have produced and to determine things like:

• Does the writing achieves the required result?
  For example, if they are writing a procedure are the steps clear or confusing?
• Is everything covered?
• Is it aimed at the appropriate audience?
  Instructions for a novice computer user, for example, will be different to those aimed at an audience of developers.

Not only must they recognise these problems, they must also be able to fix them. And that is what makes a good editor.  The ability to look at writing you have produced, to recognise any problems, and to fix those problems.

Last Modified : December 11th, 2006
Filed under : Tech Writer
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