1. Comprehensive Edit

2. Editor’s goal Improve the text Make comments for improvement Narrow line between editing the text and taking over the author’s voice. Making too extensive changes is rewriting into the editor’s voice. The editor makes suggestions. The author does the rewriting.

3. Editor’s goal It is not a question of whether or not you can rewrite the text and improve it. You are good enough writers, that is a given. The goal of an editor is to work with the author to improve the text, not to do the improvement independent of the author.

4. Line editor walks Consider how an author would respond if a document came back looking like this.

5. Edit by comments Instead of changing the text, the job of the editor is to mark up the text with suggestions. In paper-based editing, you would use Post-it notes (gives more space) or write in the margins. Now you use comments.

6. Edit by comments In the comment, you would explain what to change in the text and why. Of course, it will be in general terms. Explain this paragraph is written in language for a system administrator and the high level execs are the main reader. Or explain why this paragraph needs to be moved to another section. Then you can give some suggestions on how to make the change. How much you have to write depends on the author. And if the author is local (can they sit down and talk with you about it).

7. Copyedit Of course, depending on the amount of revision, there will be some copyediting. Copyedits can be made directly in the text with Track Changes. You can also rewrite some sentences which are not quite right (poor phrasing, etc). But leave the extensive rewrite and rearrangement of text to the author.

8. End