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You might as well be a great copy editor

blog.regehr.org

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Re: You might as well be a great copy editor

#11

Post by awillen »

Back in high school I was the copy editor for the paper (and the minutiae of AP style are still seared into my brain), and it's definitely been a useful skill. My first job was doing developer marketing, and we had a lot of devs that were happy to contribute to our blog but didn't feel their writing was great - a lot of it was just little grammatical and style stuff, so my being able to clean it up really encouraged them to work with me on creating content.

That said, I think that reading a book on copy edit just to be able to edit your own stuff is a little bit of overkill. You don't need a deep, sophisticated knowledge of grammar - something like Strunk and White's Elements of Style will cover the grammar stuff you need while also helping to offer a little bit better sense of bigger-picture writing style.

Re: You might as well be a great copy editor

#12

Post by fennecfoxen »

Tomte wrote: post #8
fennecfoxen wrote: post #4

I would like to add a third recommendation to the list of two, and recommend "Style: Towards Clarity and Grace". (Alternatively, use any similar book by Joseph M. Williams featuring the words Style, Clarity, and Grace in the title). This book discusses the information architecture of clear and coherent phrases, sentences and paragraphs in the English language, and a few passes through its contents will leave you able…

There is a fantastic section that shows why the passive has its uses, and that "avoid passive voice" can be harmful.

Oh, yes. The passive voice is not simply dismissed in this work as a tool to avoid responsibility. Rather, it takes its place as an important tool that can make paragraphs more coherent, by structuring the sentences to elevate the parts that really matter. The subjects of sentences in this paragraph, for instance, are all strongly related to writing concepts. This paragraph itself would be weakened if I were to begin, "Joseph M Williams promotes the passive voice." Our communication would only be hindered if we were to highlight the incidental matter of his authorship.

Re: You might as well be a great copy editor

#15

Post by aaroninsf »

Pro tip, from an actual pro: you can't copyedit your own copy.

Lots of reasons why, including, your inability to recognize problems you are unaware of; the inexorable fact of reading what you think you wrote, not what is on the page; inability to see logical problems, missing assumptions, etc. Ad infinitum.

There are line-level hacks which can help with some of this, e.g. reading backwards to find typographic and spelling error...

...but there is no general solution.

Suggested fix: find a professional peer and become their formal editing buddy. Define terms and scope, this is not peer review–it is simply copy editing.

Re: You might as well be a great copy editor

#16

Post by tom_mellior »

carlmr wrote: post #7
chadly wrote: post #3

Something I've known for a while (but have really come to terms with more recently) is just how important writing skills are even for technical people (even coders). It's hard to get anything done if you can't convince people why they should listen to you. Especially in this increasingly remote-connected world, writing skills are key.

>how important writing skills are even for technical people (even coders). Especially coders. Writing clear programs is a lot like clear writing. A function is like a paragraph of a text. It should meaningfully abstract one concept of your higher level logic. It should be introduced by a clean input from the previous "paragraph", and produce an output that is the input for the next "paragraph". If your higher level f…

All this that you write about code is correct, but I think you are missing the parent's point. Coders also need to be good at writing non-code text for humans. There is documentation to be written, and bug reports, and proposals for new features, etc. I have colleagues who are brilliant developers, and when they propose something I'm sure their idea is technically sound, yet often I don't understand what they are trying to say because their writing is much poorer than their coding.

Re: You might as well be a great copy editor

#17

Post by tom_mellior »

fennecfoxen wrote: post #12
Tomte wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is a fantastic section that shows why the passive has its uses, and that "avoid passive voice" can be harmful.

Oh, yes. The passive voice is not simply dismissed in this work as a tool to avoid responsibility. Rather, it takes its place as an important tool that can make paragraphs more coherent, by structuring the sentences to elevate the parts that really matter. The subjects of sentences in this paragraph, for instance, are all strongly related to writing concepts. This paragraph itself would be weakened if I were to begin…

That's not a strong argument. The natural "translation" of your first sentence would be something like: "This work does not simply dismiss the passive voice as a tool to avoid responsibility."

The author's name doesn't come into it, and there is no reason to transform "does not dismiss" into the much stronger "promotes".

Re: You might as well be a great copy editor

#18

Post by CapitalistCartr »

awillen wrote: post #11

Back in high school I was the copy editor for the paper (and the minutiae of AP style are still seared into my brain), and it's definitely been a useful skill. My first job was doing developer marketing, and we had a lot of devs that were happy to contribute to our blog but didn't feel their writing was great - a lot of it was just little grammatical and style stuff, so my being able to clean it up really encouraged…

Strunk and White's Elements of Style is trash; don't buy it, don't read it, don't follow its advice. Read this first:

http://www.lel.ed.ac.uk/~gpullum/LandOfTheFree.html

Re: You might as well be a great copy editor

#19

Post by gaogao »

aaroninsf wrote: post #15

Pro tip, from an actual pro: you can't copyedit your own copy. Lots of reasons why, including, your inability to recognize problems you are unaware of; the inexorable fact of reading what you think you wrote, not what is on the page; inability to see logical problems, missing assumptions, etc. Ad infinitum. There are line-level hacks which can help with some of this, e.g. reading backwards to find typographic and spe…

I actually use the backwards hack for code review too.

Re: You might as well be a great copy editor

#20

Post by velosol »

aaroninsf wrote: post #15

Pro tip, from an actual pro: you can't copyedit your own copy. Lots of reasons why, including, your inability to recognize problems you are unaware of; the inexorable fact of reading what you think you wrote, not what is on the page; inability to see logical problems, missing assumptions, etc. Ad infinitum. There are line-level hacks which can help with some of this, e.g. reading backwards to find typographic and spe…

I agree but have found that I'm better at copyediting my own copy the further I am from it. If I wrote something in the last week I might as well be a spellchecker. If I wrote something last month I will catch more things but not as much as if it were someone else's writing. A year or more and I start to ask "Who on earth wrote this like this?!" :) .
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