Bethany

Bethany Hailstone
ELang 350, Professor Marvin Gardner

Personal Response Paper, Prompt #1
Editing: The Career for Me?
For those who have a wonder for the written word, a glee for grammatical goings-on, and
a love for lexical layout, editing seems like a perfect occupation. This particular job, however,
involves much work in a variety of circumstances. For me, a person with a particular propensity
for perfectionism in pragmatics, editing seemed like the ideal position. Now that I know more
about what is involved in an editors usual workload, I am a little more wary about pursuing the
position. I do still want to be an editor, but I realize that it will be much more difficult than I
anticipated, and it will sometimes involve completing tasks that I find less than thrilling.
In particular, I have found that I do not look forward to dealing with the pressures of
being an editor, and dealing with all the particulars in a manuscript that could go wrong seems
intimidating to me. On the other hand, I greatly enjoy finding and correcting little errors in a
manuscript, and I love helping authors and guiding them to a love for writing and to a confidence
in their own writing abilities. Though editing will involve pressured attention to many
different details of work all at once, I still want to pursue a career in editing because I love
working with authors, helping them find love for writing, and making copyedits on a
manuscript.
After exploring different career ideas, I chose to be an editor after dealing mostly with
editing as a writing tutor. Starting in high school, I have tutored in writing and found great joy in
finding ways to help authors put their ideas together in a logical and stylistically sound fashion.
In college, I have continued this passion for tutoring writing by working as a Writing Fellow. I
find a particular thrill in sitting down with a paper, commenting on it and making corrections as
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needed, and then sitting down with the author to discuss the corrections and why I made them.
There are those moments of ah ha! in which the student discovers how to improve his or her
writing and realizes that he or she can write well. That light in a students eyes is what first gave
me a love for editing, and it made me realize the importance of helping writers understand their
abilities and learn how to write effectively.
Although editing is not always done through one-on-one contact with the author, there is
still an opportunity to help the author figure out what he or she wants to say and how. According
to Gerald Gross, Two basic questions the editor should be addressing to the author are: Are you
saying what you want to say? and, Are you saying it as clearly and consistently as possible?
(Gross, 6). Through queries, comments, and corrections, the editor can point out errors in logic,
syntax, or even grammar and then help the author figure out how he or she wants to rephrase or
add information to convey it effectively while still maintaining his or her style and goals.
Another element of editing that I enjoy is finding little things that need fixing. I have a
love for picking apart a paper and correcting the passive voice, the punctuation, the
capitalization, and so forth. This is just a particular type of editing, specifically manuscript
editing or copyediting, but it is one of my favorite things about being an editor. It involves great
attention to detail, but helps make a tidy and understandable piece of writing. According to The
Chicago Manual of Style, Manuscript editing, also called copyediting or line editing, requires
attention to every word and mark of punctuation in a manuscript, a thorough knowledge of the
style to be followed, and the ability to make quick, logical, and defensible decisions (Chicago,
70). These little changes and this attention to detail are what make editing enjoyable for me.
Because copyediting requires a particular attention to detail, it can also be a stressful
element of editing. This pressure is one of the elements of editing that makes me somewhat
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hesitant at times to pursue a career in editing. As Amy Einsohn put it, In many ways, being a
copyeditor is like sitting for an English exam that never ends: At every moment, your knowledge
of spelling, grammar, punctuation, usage, syntax, and diction is being tested (Einsohn, 4).
Although I do enjoy finding and fixing spelling, grammar, punctuation, usage, syntax, and
diction, I have learned that I am far from knowing all the rules of English that accompany those
areas of writing. This makes copyediting somewhat stressful because I do not want to miss
anything that needs fixing and I do not want to incorrectly make a change to a manuscript.
Because of this added stress, I have learned that I am constantly looking up particulars of English
and trying to make what seem like world-changing decisions about a single comma or hyphen.
This pressure has deterred me somewhat from becoming a copyeditor.
In my experiences copyediting for my class at Brigham Young University, I have learned
how stressful it can be trying to find and fix all errors in a sentence, but I have also learned that
my love for correcting sentences and fitting them together far outweighs any negative outlook I
may have on editing. As part of the class, I have completed several homework assignments to
practice copyediting, and I have finished exams and other assignments to assess and increase my
skills as a copyeditor. From these assignments, I have learned that I am not particularly good at
finding all of the mistakes in a manuscript in one sitting, but I have also learned that know what
to do in most copyediting situations. This has helped me find love for editing even though it
appears stressful because I know that I can fix the problems that need fixing; I just need to
practice finding them in a manuscript more rather than practicing those copyediting skills on
sentences tailored for those situations like those in homework assignments.
Copyediting is not the only element involved in editing experiences. According to Gerald
Gross, Editors in publishing houses can be perceived as basically performing three different
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roles, all of them simultaneously. First they must find and select the books the house is to
publish. Second, they edit. And third, they perform the Janus-like function of representing the
house to the author and the author to the house (Gross, 4). I have not yet had the privilege of
learning how to complete all of these tasks, but I welcome the challenge. I look forward to
reading through manuscripts and helping decide which ones to keep and to work on. The second
element, copyediting, is one that I have learned to love despite its pressures, and the third
element involves contact with authors, which is one part of editing that I really enjoy and have
been practicing since I began tutoring writing in high school. Although this is an extensive
process, it means that there are many different directions I may go when I begin a career in
editing. I will most likely be doing work at times that is not my favorite task, but I will also have
opportunities to help authors learn how to love writing and how to write well. That is what I look
forward to most in a career in editing.
This is a personal paper, so I will be completely honest in saying that I do not find every
aspect of editing appealing. In fact, the pressures of editing and the constant need to work by
particulars and to find all the things that need changing in a manuscript are all elements of
editing that I find unappealing and even stressful. Fortunately, editing involves many different
steps in the editing process, and my love for working with authors and for making sentences fit
together logically will be put to good use in a number of positions available in editing. At times I
will need to copyedit a manuscript in a set amount of time, and I may find it stressful trying to
detect every error and make only correct and necessary changes. Still, I will be able to find little
elements of English that make a sentence work, and I can talk to authors about their work. Those
are the things I look forward to most and are the reasons that make me want to be an editor
despite the stress of editing.
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Works Cited
Einsohn, A. The Copyeditors Handbook: A Guide for Book Publishing and Corporate
Communications. 3
rd
ed. California: University of California Press, 2011. Print.
Gross, G. Editors on Editing: What Writers Need to Know about What Editors Do. 3
rd
ed. New
York: Grove Press, 1993. Print.
The University of Chicago Press. The Chicago Manual of Style. 16
th
ed. Chicago and London:
The University of Chicago Press, 2010. Print.

Bethany

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Bethany Hailstone

ELang 350, Professor Marvin Gardner

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