Corporate Editing - Types (or Layers) of Editing

There are four types of editing that I regularly apply to corporate reports. The corporate world tends to undervalue editing of documents, and often all four are carried out at the same time. In standard publishing, they are not only separate functions, they are often conducted by different people, who specialise in their type of editing. 

Sadly, there is a belief that because people have a university degree they don’t need an editor. I always retort that everyone, even an editor, needs an editor. If best-selling authors (think JK Rowling, multi-millionaire) have editors, why do we mere plebs think we don’t need them?

Content Editing

In theory, content editing is the most likely to be done in a corporate setting. This is simply checking that the document includes all the information it should and none that it shouldn’t. The reality is that the author is often far too close to the subject matter and document to see what they’re not saying.

I was once handed a major bid document, about two hours before the submission deadline, and asked to edit it. What they expected me to do was ‘proofread’ it – check for obvious typos, spelling mistakes and missed words. That wasn’t was it needed.

The document had been to the graphics department. The company recognised that not everyone was good with layout, colour and pictures, so we had a graphics department. The document was beautiful. Lovely layout, great style choices, beautiful and relevant graphics. When I handed it back, I said I couldn’t fix it in two days, let alone two hours. There were whole pages that said nothing. There was one section where the heading didn’t relate to the text in any way (or maybe the text didn’t relate to the heading). In fact, the subject matter of the text changed so dramatically mid-way through that I thought I’d dropped a page. There was no connection from one block of text to the next, no flow of thought or ideas through the document. I don’t remember the subject matter now, but as an example (and it really was this extreme), the heading was “Ice creams of the 21^st century”, the first paragraph was about chocolate bean harvesting in the Amazon, and over the page the next paragraph was about Italian summers. Are you surprised I thought there was a page missing?

But it really was a beautiful document. Strange that we’re more concerned about what the document looks like than what it actually contains.

Structural Editing

Structural editing follows on from content editing. Once you’re sure that the document has a story, structural editing checks that the story flows; that each chunk of text flows from the previous chunk and into the next chunk. Imagine reading Little Red Riding Hood, starting with the Red meeting the Wolf at Grandma, followed by her walking through the woods, and ending with her being reunited with Grandma after the Woodsman kills the Wolf. It’s a ridiculous thought, but often that’s how our corporate reports read.

Structural editing needs to be conducted in layers. First, do all the sections of a report flow; next, do all the paragraphs or sub-sections within each section flow; and finally, does every sentence within each paragraph flow.

Copy Editing

Copy editing is the nit-picky, time consuming, eye-straining, brain-numbing portion of the editing process. Which is probably why most corporates do it half-heartedly, or not at all. Copy editing is where you pick up all the inconsistencies, where you fix all the silly sentences, where you remove all the bombastic terminology. The process I use for copy editing is the main focus on this publication, because without a process you can’t possibly remember everything that has to be checked.

Proof Reading

Proof reading is what most people mean when they ask you to edit something. They mean, “Hey, this is really good writing. I know because I wrote it. But I’m not a typist, so there may be some typos in it. Please fix them.” And, essentially, that’s what proof reading is – it’s fixing the last minute errors, because that’s all the time you’re normally given. Typos, spelling mistake, really obvious grammar issues, and missed words. Nothing more.

Given that most corporate offices only proof read documents (often with a fair bit of slap and dash), and miss the three biggest and most effective components of the editing process, is it any wonder that our reports read the way a mouthful of dry sawdust tastes?

Corporate Editing - A Preface

I am beginning a series of posts (hopefully regularly) on corporate report editing. A step-by-step, editing for non-editors guide.

In 2008, at the age of 40, I graduated with a Bachelor of Environmental Management. Although there’s a lot of encouragement to return to school and become qualified in something, anything, mature-aged graduates are often a curiosity in the workplace. A number of my supervisors were younger than me, none of them significantly older. While they had a lot of professional experience that I didn’t have, they had no more life experience. 

In just about any office setting, graduates get given the dregs of work. Often this includes days of mindless photocopying or filing. After all, someone has to do it and the graduate is probably a cheaper resource than the admin assistant. As a mature-aged graduate, coming out of admin, firstly, I wasn’t necessarily the cheapest resource and secondly, many of my supervisors were uncomfortable handing such work to me.

In a moment of sheer desperation, one supervisor handed me a chapter from an Environmental Impact Assessment and said, “Here, read this and see if it makes sense.” And the rest, as the cliché goes, is history.

My input to that first report was very minimal. At best, I proofread it. That is, I checked it for typos, spelling errors and missing words. A senior colleague read it and corrected a whole bunch of things I had no idea about (or was too insecure to change). I now work as a freelance editor, freely suggesting changes, and even on occasion recommending some documents never be published.

Am I brilliant editor? No, I don’t think so. My social media network take great delight in pointing out my grammar fails. I am methodical, with a well-designed editing process that takes an average corporate report and lifts it its standard. My method depends not so much on my language ability as it does on the step-by-step process that I apply to each document. Being a bit of language nerd obviously helps, but even someone with solid corporate English skills can improve their documents with the same process.

This is not a quick-fix process. It is time and labour intensive. You cannot speed read or skim read. You cannot read just once through from top to bottom. 

Editing, whether you’re seen as qualified by the writer or not, is a tricky balancing act. Imagine a friend coming to you and asking whether they should marry their partner – an individual for whom you harbour a deep loathing, considering them completely unworthy of your friend and a general lowlife. Your friend, however, is absolutely besotted with them. What do you say? Some of us would barge in, all truth and no tact, telling our friend exactly what we think of the partner. Others among us would be so concerned not to hurt or upset the friend we’d end up endorsing, if not actually recommending, the marriage proceed. 

For many people the stuff the write – whether it be a report for work, a university assignment or a long-dreamed of novel – is an object of obsessive devotion and love. The editor needs find a line between blunt truth and wimpy complicity. The blunt truth just ends the friendship; the wimpy complicity leads to longer term hurts. 

As a ‘stand to the side’ corporate editor I had the advantage of not having to take responsibility for whatever ended up going out the door. I made suggestions, I offered alternatives, I put forward ideas, but at the end of the day (or whatever the deadline for the document was) I was not responsible. The author, reviewer and approver all took on that responsibility.

You may not be so fortunate. You may be the approver, the one with the responsibility of signing off on the document. Biased as I may be, I sincerely believe that is not the ideal. Ideally, editing should be a separate process. The editor becomes not the friend being asked for advice, but a counsellor. However, if you are cast in the role of honest friend, keep in mind that honesty does not necessarily need a sledge hammer or a doormat to be constructive.

Hopefully, this series of posts will give you some tips on how to approach editing without resorting to either extreme.

Next time: four levels of editing.

Motivation Murderers

This article by Kyle Eschenroeder (Killing the 7 Motivation Murderers) is not about writing, although he does refer to his writing a bit. It's about the things that kill our motivation. Long, but interesting read. I've just grabbed his main points for my future reference; the article fleshes them out.

1. Ingratitude

1. Make a list of things you’re grateful for.
2. The things surrounding you right now that you’re grateful for.
3. Make a list of lists of things to be grateful for.
4. Make a list of the worst happening to you right now.
5. Write a “thank you” note.
6. Saying “Thank You” to nothing.

2. Envy

1. Notice your reactions to the successes and failures of others.
2. Kill Facebook.
3. Focus on your work.
4. Realize that Envy is separate from it’s chosen object.

3. Impatience

1. Have a map.
2. Focus on the current task.
3. Faith in the Process.
4. Study the Masters.
5. Take a break.  

4. Overwhelm

1. Subtract.
2. Organize.
3. Lower the bar.

5. Inaction

1. Action is everything.
2. Lowering the bar: Part 2.
3. Appreciate the wisdom of action.
4. Don’t stop.

6. Loss of Meaning

1. Adopt the craftsman mindset.
2. Meaning is created in work.
3. Aim bigger.
4. Express yourself.
5. Realize that your life already has meaning.

7. No Skin in the Game

1. Be responsible to someone.
2. Set yourself up for pain.

And a bonus point:

8. Poor Health

1. Sleep.
2. Exercise!
3. Stop eating shitty.
4. Caffeinate.

Embrace Our Mistakes

This is an interesting article about teaching school students to embrace their mistakes; to learn and grow from them, rather than be embarrassed or ashamed of them. Sadly, even as adults we view the red pen as a mark of shame, instead of a guide to learning.

As an editor my goal is twofold - I want to improve someone's writing for them AND I want them to understand why I've made the changes and to learn from those changes.

For example, yesterday I edited an article that had a sentence, "The structure of questions and problems posed in our tasks were too generic." This is a common problem in complex, multi-phrase sentences. The plurals (questions and problems) have been incorrectly connected to the verb (were). The subject of the sentence is actually "the structure", which is singular; therefore, the verb is also singular (was). To simplify the sentence makes the issue clear, ""The structure in our tasks were too generic" is obviously incorrect. When I 'red penned' the error (with track changes in the document file) I also added a comment explaining my edit.

I'm sure there are many people who don't want to have an editor read their material simply because they don't want to deal with the emotional fall out of the mistakes. But I don't know a single editor or who says, "AHA! Gotcha! What an idiot!" It is true, we may laugh at some mistakes, we may make fun of some mistakes, but rest assured - we are not making fun of the writer. We are only too aware that we could have made just the same mistake ourselves. I'm sure I've written some completely stupid things in the past, and I will continue to write horrid English in the future. Some may simply be typos (we all make those), but some will be because I didn't know any better. I can only hope that if someone is kind enough to point them out to me that I will not respond with shame and embarrassment, but that I will hold my head high and say, "I'm learning, I'm growing"; that I will endeavour to follow Churchill's example of "... going from failure to failure without losing enthusiasm."