What Does an Editor Do?

Abstract

What Does an Editor Do? Jim McCue (bio) Well, as a job title, it's nearly as capacious as "consultant" or "executive." I've edited everything from doctorates to a thriller, from a newspaper section to a scholarly edition of T. S. Eliot, and from prime ministers to a private press volume of obscene 17th-century epigrams. I've worked on advertising copy and reference books, but there are still many kinds of editorial work I haven't done: I've never chosen the running order, for instance, for the Ten O'Clock News or commissioned a multivolume Penguin translation of a neglected Spanish writer. Whatever the specific job, the editor is in the business of bringing writing (or perhaps images or sound) to a particular audience in the most appropriate and convenient way, so that it can be readily found, understood, absorbed, and referred to. A commissioning editor is always listening for clues as to what people would like to read about, then wondering which author will have informed or provocative or quirky things to say. The answer may be the latest shock-blogger, or may be Montaigne, in a little-known essay that's newly telling in the age of Trump. While the author takes the credit, the original impulse may have been editorial, and the editor may have made a substantial imaginative contribution. As a go-between, the editor is responsible both to the source (usually the writer) and to the reader. All kinds of people have good stories to tell, whether fictional or true—and remember, factual reports in newspapers are called "stories," too—but several skills are involved in knowing how to present them. The editor looks for what is eye-catching, perhaps funny or poignant or unusual, winnows out irrelevant [End Page 239] detail, and gives the story a shape, while thinking all the time of how it will be received by the intended audience, whether it be 10-year-olds, Daily Mail buyers, or university students reading textbooks. Vocabulary and sentence structure may need to be simplified (or formalized); facts or names from history, or other references, may need to be explained or cut. Context is all. In Music Week, it might not be necessary to explain that Domenico Cimerosa was an 18th-century composer; elsewhere, it probably is. But it is almost never necessary to say who Beethoven was, and can sound daft to specify "Ludwig van"—as though there might be a doubt as to which one, or as though you've not heard of him before. Authors used to writing for a very specialist audience sometimes make ridiculous judgments about these things, expecting the reader to know who Grosswurm and Smallbone are, but then writing "the playwright William Shakespeare (1564–1616)." If copy says, "he wrote off a Porsche worth $50,000," do not insert "(£42,345)." And whatever the "house style" dictates, do not change "she looked a million dollars" to "$1m." This photograph appeared recently on the internet, with the caption "Piper Kerr, a member of the Scottish National Antarctic Expedition, plays bagpipes for an indifferent penguin, March 1904." After "Piper Kerr," an over-zealous editor added "(right)." Click for larger view View full resolution [End Page 240] When I edited obituaries for The Times, I particularly enjoyed working on the lives of scientists. These were usually written by colleagues of the subjects, who understood the technicalities of their friends' achievements, but because they wrote as though for their students, the copy was often full of jargon, equations, and acronyms. My role—to which I was well suited—was to play the ignoramus on behalf of the reader. Trying not to lose anything crucial to the story, I would rewrite it in language that the intelligent nonspecialist could be expected to follow, which sometimes entailed some mugging-up of my own. I would then send my revision to the author, explaining that some things requiring too much background knowledge would have to be omitted or given only in general terms. We would then haggle to create a final text that was scientifically correct and yet comprehensible to newspaper readers. To satisfy both sides meant a job...