Technical documents provide information that readers need to make decisions or complete tasks. Technical editing ensures that this information is presented in a way that facilitates the reader's understanding. Technical editors offer suggestions for improvement in design of both content and layout and therefore work with the document in both early and late stages.
#31226
Final Check: Dotting Those i’s and Crossing Those t’s
You’ve worked long and hard on your article, newsletter, press release, promo brochure or report. Now it’s time to move your baby off your screen and into the world. Not so long ago your baby would have gone either onto a printed page or onto the Web. These days, your words will probably head for both. Even materials such as newsletters, white papers, reports and advertorials that are first published on paper are quite likely to be reprinted, archived or otherwise reused on the Web, perhaps even as an audio file or podcast. People may even blog about your content. What does this mean for you as a business communicator?
Canavor, Natalie and Claire Meirowitz. Communication World Bulletin (2008). Articles>Business Communication>Editing>Writing
#18541
Finding Information in Different Ways
People think about questions or information in different ways. It’s important for an index to provide multiple ways of locating any given piece of information.
Brown, Fred. Allegro Time! (2003). Articles>Indexing>Editing
#22276
Review: The Fine Art of Copyediting 
Even though you might not be a copyeditor in a publishing house, the information that Stainton provides can be useful to any editor as well as to any writer.
Staples, Jeff. Technical Communication Online (2004). Articles>Reviews>Editing
#28813
Editing is an art that needs to be cultivated and fine-tuned just like any other. When one is novice, the editing goals are to proofread, to clean up the text, and to correct 'grammatical' errors. The entire focus is on words and phrases. So, when they edit, they read the text as it comes and edit the words to make the text read better. What is it that they really miss? They often miss the big picture, the whole idea, and the context.
Misra, Reena. Indus (2007). Articles>Editing
#24959
Flexible Diff-ing in a Collaborative Writing System
Discusses the use of computer-generated information about what has been revised in the display of editing in word processors.
Neuwirth, Christine M., Ravinder Chandhok, David S. Kaufer, Paul Erion, James Morris and Dale Miller. Computer Supported Cooperative Work (1992). Articles>Editing>Word Processing>Collaboration
#31033
The post-production process known as 'Foley' refers to the art of recording 'live' sync sound effects to picture. It is akin to looping the dialogue, but instead of recording the actors performing their lines while watching themselves on screen--skilled craftspeople known as 'Foley artists' will walk, run, and act out any sync sound effects to match what the actor is seen (or implied) doing in the picture.
Ginsburg, Fred. Equipment Emporium (2006). Articles>Multimedia>Editing>Audio
#10812
Forget About the Lawyers! First, Let's Kill the Editors! Right?
Some companies and upper management, and even some documentation managers and writers, seem to agree. After all, in today's world of desktop publishing, writers are also typesetters and illustrators -- why not let them be editors as well? They know English. So why not save money, terminate the editors, and let peer editing begin? Or if we do keep some editors, let them be the designers, illustrators, and typesetters. As for language? Forget it! The readers will understand. Besides, who reads documentation anyway?
Sorotskin, Marilee J. Boston Broadside (1991). Articles>Editing>Documentation
#14280
A document’'s format leads readers to expect certain types of information. A memo format suggests something different from a newspaper column. Your task as a workplace professional is to meet the reader’s expectations by presenting information that readers need in an appropriate format. This computer file contains the description of a golf ball, written by a student who is an avid golfer. You can edit and format this description (or a selected portion of it) for a specific audience.
Burnett, Rebecca E. Thomson (2001). Academic>Course Materials>Editing
#10486
EFA's newsletter, The Freelancer, is published six times a year and is mailed free to all members.
#14535
From Editing to Writing: Learning the Write Stuff 
At SAS Institute Inc., a leading software development corporation, the Documentation Development Division maintains separate staffs for writing and editing. Working as an editor and working as a writer require distinctly different skills in developing user documentation. In this paper, we discuss our experience making the transition from editing to writing: the differences between the jobs, the similarities, and how working as editors has benefited us as writers. We direct this paper to anyone interested in making the change, in either direction. While your situation may differ, we hope you find our experience informative.
Restivo, Kathryn A. and Philip R. Shelton. STC Proceedings (1994). Presentations>Editing>Writing
#24565
From the Margins to the Center: The Future of Annotation 
This article describes the importance of annotation to reading and writing practices and reviews new technologies that complicate the ways annotation can be used to support and enhance traditional reading, writing, and collaboration processes. Important directions for future research are discussed, with emphasis on studying how professionals read and annotate, how readers might use annotations that have been produced by others, and how the interface of an annotation program affects collaboration and communication on revision. In each area, the authors emphasize issues and methods that will be productive for enhancing theories of workplace and classroom communication as well as implications for the optimal design of annotation technologies.
Wolfe, Joanna L. and Christine M. Neuwirth. Journal of Business and Technical Communication (2001). Articles>Editing>Online
#18306
An index pulls together all the references to a topic that are scattered within a publication. If a reference is omitted, the user may assume that particular sub-topic is not discussed.
Brown, Fred. Allegro Time! (2002). Articles>Indexing>Editing
#15138
Gentle Feedback That Encourages Learning
Offers suggestions on how teachers of technical communication and reviewers of coworkers' documents can offer constructive criticism of others' writing.
Doumont, Jean-luc. Intercom (2002). Articles>Editing
#19779
Get Smart: Interface Design and Production Meet Editorial on a New CD-ROM Magazine
Creating a new magazine is a large task. Creating a new magazine on CD-ROM can be a huge task. All of the design and layout decisions which are part of any project are magnified in an electronic project. Writers and editors have to learn to write “for the screen, ” illustrations have to fit the size, graphics format and palette determined by the display program, every reference, sequence and link has to be checked online, and the whole thing has to run on a “real world” 386 machine. GetSmart made the journey, with its premier issue release in July 1995.
Quesenbery, Whitney. STC Proceedings (1996). Design>User Interface>Editing
#10814
Getting Ducks in a Row: The Rules for Displayed Lists 
When is a list not a list? When it's not recognized as such by the reader. A good displayed list is the mental equivalent of a line of cheerful ducklings behind their sensible mom on their way to an invigorating dip. A short series of items can often be run smoothly into text, but lists longer than eight lines or so tend to stray in the reader's mind from the preceding thoughts. A run-in list that becomes estranged from its lead-in context is worthless.
Jorgensen, Linda B. Editorial Eye, The (1997). Articles>Editing
#15139
Presents ten humorous suggestions for technical writers on how to persuade reviewers of documentation to do their jobs.
Hart, Geoffrey J.S. Intercom (2000). Articles>Editing>Collaboration
#20075
Getting Your Style Guide Written!
This paper describes how to approach the project of writing a stand-alone Style Guide that provides technical writers and other employees with a reference for documentation procedures and policies. A Style Guide project is often placed aside while other priority projects forge ahead. This occurs for several reasons, the most common being that writing a Style Guide is a monumental task! This paper provides you with the skeleton to manage a Style Guide writing project and deliver the product on time
Taylor-Collins, Pamela. STC Proceedings (1995). Articles>Style Guides>Editing
#31516
Good Writing and Editing: Are They Dying Arts? And, Should We Care?
The answer to both questions: "YES!" Like us, you may be dismayed by the growing quantity of poor writing that bombards us. We see it everywhere, in publications, web sites, newspapers and corporate materials—writing that is not just full of grammatical mistakes and misused words, but is also poorly thought-out, unclear and contains downright confusing language.
Canavor, Natalie and Claire Meirowitz. Communication World Bulletin (2004). Articles>Writing>Editing
#22691
Don't you think that it is a tragedy that 95 percent of the people who desire to be technical writers have a poor command over the language? I am sure all of us make a mistake or two, once in a while. But to make it in every sentence and paragraph shows utter disrespect for readers.
Kamath, Gurudutt R. IT People (2003). Articles>Editing>Grammar>Technical Writing
#29778
This paper examines raster and vector file formats and explains the details necessary to transform them for use in various output devices. Methodologies and suggestions for raster-to-vector, vector-to-raster, resampling of raster, 3-dimensional vector to 2-dimensional vector, and 2-dimensional vector to 2-dimensional vector conversions are discussed.
Porter, Sara J. STC Proceedings (2004). Design>Graphic Design>Image Editing
#10815
I want to discuss one particular aspect of Chicago's hyphenation advice, which seems questionable at the outset and is so often abused in practice that I think it needs a good thrashing. This is the notion that a compound adjective should be hyphenated when it immediately precedes a noun, and left open when it follows the noun, for example in the predicate. Chicago's example is fast sailing ship, which is ambiguous because it might mean a sailing ship that is fast or a ship that is sailing fast. Hence, to resolve the ambiguity, you hyphenate fast-sailing if you mean to say it is a ship that is sailing fast. But the hyphen is not necessary except when the phrase immediately precedes ship, because the phrase is not ambiguous elsewhere.
Tadfor, Tom Little. Telp.com (1996). Articles>Editing
#19933
Green Squiggly Lines: Evaluating Student Writing in Computer-Mediated Environments
We have a theory, a trace, a prediction of what will happen in the influence that word processors have had on student writing. By outlining a history of word processors in writing pedagogy and assessment (a vast increase in studies of and pedagogies advocating revision occurred in the 1980s), 'Green Squiglly Lines' sketches the potential impact of electronic portfolios on writing assessment. How will the publication--the turning of academic essays into (pre)professional documents [literally portfolios in the graphic artist sense of the word]--change writing assessment in American higher education?
Whithaus, Carl. Academic.Writing (2003). Articles>Editing>Online>Word Processing
#14134
Guidelines for Technical Edits
The purpose of the technical edit is to ensure that all materials produced by the Documentation department are as complete and technically accurate as possible. Each document will also pass through a peer edit by a member of the Documentation department after the technical edit is complete, so as a technical editor you do not need to be concerned with issues of style and grammar. Your main focus should be on the technical accuracy of the document. The first step, of course, is simply to check the document for any errors. We need to make sure w have correctly described each feature of the software, as well as the overall design and purpose of the forms and systems we are discussing. Beyond checking for errors, however, we want the documentation we produce to be as helpful to the user as possible. For the purposes of the technical edit, this means not only checking for inaccuracies, but asking whether the document has all the information that is necessary to use the software successfully.
#29318
Compared to GIF and JPEG, the PNG file format has a lot to offer: smaller file sizes, higher quality, and superb transparency. All you need are a few guidelines and techniques to expand your design toolbox.
Sawyer McFarland, Dave. Creative Pro (2007). Design>Graphic Design>Image Editing>Standards
#15140
Offers tips on eliminating hype from editorial copy.
Eyman, Carol L. Intercom (2001). Articles>Editing
