Republishing one of my better threads from the ol' birdsite: When people find out I'm an editor, they assume I have some kind of mastery of grammar, honed through extensive training and constant practice, and that seeing grammatical errors in public is like sandpaper on my nerves. It's […] - ThreadSky

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bmac.jawns.club.ap.brid.gy • 62 days ago

Republishing one of my better threads from the ol' birdsite:

When people find out I'm an editor, they assume I have some kind of mastery of grammar, honed through extensive training and constant practice, and that seeing grammatical errors in public is like sandpaper on my nerves.

It's […]

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bmac.jawns.club.ap.brid.gy•62 days ago

I've spent most of my career as a Development Editor, which is a role the general public doesn't seem to know about, although I swear we're not hiding.

I work in tech books, where this role is well defined, as it is for most professional content areas (medical, legal, etc.)

bmac.jawns.club.ap.brid.gy•62 days ago

A development editor looks for higher-level stuff: Is the level of explanation appropriate? Are you addressing the right audience? Is the complexity level consistent? Is the tone correct for the purpose? What if we reorganized the content?

Nothing about grammar here.

bmac.jawns.club.ap.brid.gy•62 days ago

The grammar editing is done by a copyeditor, who comes later in the process. Copyediting is a separate skill, one I'm also trained in, but I don't think I do it as well as many of my colleagues, nor do I enjoy it as much as development.

bmac.jawns.club.ap.brid.gy•62 days ago

Here's the secret bit: in general, development editing costs more than copyediting. So if I stop to fix a grammatical error while I'm doing my development edit, I'm not just focusing on the wrong thing, I'm doing somebody else's job, and costing my client more money to do it.

bmac.jawns.club.ap.brid.gy•62 days ago

As a result, I've actively trained myself to *not* fix grammatical errors when I see them, to just ignore them and get the sense of the author's message.

I still see the errors, but I look past them.

bmac.jawns.club.ap.brid.gy•62 days ago

So my professional skills don't make me more sensitive to grammar errors; they make me less so. Which means you don't have to worry about the typo in the e-mail you sent me, or heaven forbid, a text.

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