My unpopular opinions about what it means to be an editor

I don't pretend to be the best editor around. I think I do well enough, although I'm sometimes a bit sloppy (please refrain from combing through this blog and bringing the typos and other errors to my attention).

There's a type of editor I've encountered many times over the course of my editing career -- I think of them as the persnickety editors, the editors who will defend a style guide to the death and make complicated or cumbersome changes to text not because it helps convey meaning but because the style guide tells them to. These editors learned a handful of die-hard editing rules somewhere along the way, and they cling to these rules with a foolish consistency that serves no purpose other than to gratify their own sensibilities. They eschew the editorial "we" in all cases because they were once told it was wrong. They rebel against passive voice every time they encounter it because they were trained early on to do so. Their infinitives are never split.

I, too, spent my formative editing years in just such an environment, with the most persnickety of persnickety editors as my mentors. I learned that every "on the other hand" must be preceded by an "on the one hand" and that if you leave a phrase such as "small business owner" without a hyphen, your poor, stupid readers might* be confused enough to think you're talking about very small people who own businesses.

(*I must confess that I very nearly typed "may" instead of "might" in that sentence but changed it because of my own ingrained set of persnickety rules, which includes this: "might" is for probability, while "may" is for permission.)

I've been out in the editing world long enough that I finally feel justified in having some opinions of my own, and here's what I've come to believe (bear in mind that my editing experience is restricted to non-fiction, primarily technical in nature): The persnickety editors are, in my opinion, far too caught up in whether each phrase is "correct" according to their style guide or their internal set of rules, and they are incapable of looking at the big picture. Does the text make sense? Does it communicate its point in a manner that the target audience will be able to understand? Do I, the editor, understand it?

An editor's first and primary job is to ensure that the text they're editing conveys meaning as simply and clearly as possible. It is best to leave the author's voice intact as much as possible, which means making the fewest possible changes. If something is downright wrong, then by all means fix it. We will not allow a misused its/it's or their/there/they're or to/too/two or every day/everyday, and so on and so forth. But do most readers really care whether there's an "on the one hand" as long as what they're reading makes sense? Do we really need to get caught up in the minutiae of language that only other editors care about? And, if we really must get caught up in the minutiae, can it not be secondary to conveying meaning? (Can I not stop asking rhetorical questions?)

Here's what I'm opposed to: editors who do not understand what they're editing, but who only go through the motions, making sure each sentence has the necessary parts and appropriate punctuation, regardless of what all those words are saying. Pay attention! Educate yourselves! Edit meaningfully! And don't worry so much about whether to use may or might, since or because, each other or one another. Just make sure the words make sense.