How Is the Field of Technical Editing Different?
First, technical editors refer to themselves not as freelancers but as
contractors, and technical editing does not mean editing for computer magazines
-- which is magazine editing. Instead, technical editors work on hardware and
software documentation for the purposes of analyzing, interpreting and
instructing.
Fields in which technical editors find themselves working are wide-ranging:
science, computer science, agriculture, medicine, and even robotics (an
up-and-coming area). As an independent contractor, Galindo often finds herself
asked to perform all stages of a job, from development through the final
proofreading; frequently she is hired as an editor but finds herself functioning
as a project leader, often as a result of the less-stable technology business
environment.
Technical expertise is needed, and classes on computer programming languages are
helpful, although the technical editor is not necessarily a subject matter
expert. Recommended reference books are the Chicago Manual of Style; Sun
Microsystems’s style guide, entitled Read Me First (but see below for word on
the upcoming revised edition); the Apple Style Guide; and the Microsoft Style
Guide. For medical editing, there is the Publication Manual of the American
Psychological Association.
Useful Web sites on matters of style for people who create or edit online
content are www.contentious.com,
a Web-zine for writers, editors, and others who create content for online media;
www.onelook.com, a
dictionary search tool; and www.refdesk.com.
In several ways, technical editing is different from regular editing. In
technical editing the editor does not try to preserve the author’s voice.
Instead, the emphasis is on clarity: "If you do not understand something
the first time you read it, the technical editor has not done a proper
job," said Galindo. She cited the following quotation as unacceptable:
"This creates a very happy ending when the computer decides to accept
data." Also, technical editors do not necessarily work with paragraphs but
instead with headings, outlines and instructions.
Naturally the editor must understand the procedures discussed in order to
organize information and format its presentation. A technical editor might
perform a variety of tasks: editing of textbooks and user manuals, defining
readers and purpose, developmental editing, copyediting, proofreading, usability
testing, and updating content. Often the editor is called on to bring material
into conformity with government regulations or styles, to conform to a house
style, to insure accuracy, and even to create templates for the writing process.
In addition, the editor may need to check hypertext links and may be retained to
handle ongoing revisions.
Important software tools include Adobe FrameMaker and Macromedia DreamWeaver
(for checking HTML tags and links).
Business Prospects and Strategies
Times are tight for independent contractors, Galindo said, in part because
managers see the editor as not entirely necessary. What do you do in a
non-existent job market? Galindo suggests some flexibility; for example, she
sometimes considers accepting less than her usual hourly rate where there are
compensatory opportunities, such as the opportunity to pick up a new skill on
the job. Vitally important, too, is to understand that independent contractors
are expected to hit the ground running with an extensive repertory of existing
skills.
It is frequently the case, said Galindo, that at the eleventh hour she is called
in to clean up or complete a project. In some cases, she is given three to five
weeks to do so. Galindo feels confident that there will continue to be jobs for
people who possess not just editing skills but also the ability to put a book
together at the last minute, as she did with Broderbund, where she wrote,
edited, and did the layout for a 120-page book, using FrameMaker. The ability to
make a table of contents and an index are also useful.
To get started as an independent contractor, one has a better chance set up
as a small business. Resources include the Software Contractors’ Guild (www.scguild.com),
Lloyd Ritter Consulting, now known as Venturi Technology Partners, (www.venturitechnologypartners.com),
the Society for Technical Communication (www.stc.org),
and the National Writer’s Union (www.nwu.org).
Working on Staff
Jeff Gardiner, managing editor with Sun Microsystems, discussed technical
editing from the perspective of a permanent staff member, although he was less
than optimistic about the current job market. Gardiner informed BAEF members
that Sun will lay off 11 percent of its editorial staff. He mentioned that the
ratio of writers to editors is now 12:1, up from 7:1. There are few technical
writing jobs and still fewer editing jobs.
That news came as a letdown after Gardiner had detailed the many ways in
which working on staff is rewarding. Staff editors get a chance to work closely
with writers and sometimes to develop long-term relationships with writing teams
or engineering groups. To ensure consistency, everyone uses Teamware software.
The work flow he described is somewhat different from that outlined by Galindo,
in that at Sun there are staff members to handle each stage of a task.
Contractors are only occasionally hired to handle overflow.
There is also the opportunity to have a lasting effect on style. The Sun
editorial forum, which meets to discuss matters of style, has been in existence
for eight years. The culmination of their discussions is the new Sun Editorial
Style Guide, which should be available for purchase within the next six months.
A lot of work has gone into indexing standards, naming conventions on interface
design, machine editing, and translation and localization for non-English users.
Another tool, the SunProof editing tool, is used for such things as catching
pronouns that lack antecedents or flagging sentences with more than 24 words.
Galindo and Gardiner demonstrated an interesting difference in perspective on
the matter of who determines matters of style. Galindo is often called into
companies who have little or no formal house style and find themselves in need
of someone experienced to develop and impose consistency and accepted usage. She
often finds herself, therefore, as an arbitrator of such matters. Gardiner, on
the other hand, who has been part of the eight-year editor’s forum at Sun and
has just overseen a major style manual revision, told of an episode in which an
independent contractor suggested style changes without realizing that Sun had
already developed its own conventions. Both agreed on the need for flexibility
and sensitivity to the needs of individual organizations.
