Re: More title questions

["Raj Machhan" <raj -dot- machhan -at- gmail -dot- com>]

The idea behind discussing the designations used in newspapers and
magazines is to examine the possibility of whether these can be
adopted in a Tech Comm set up. Janice seems to have missed a key
point: It is the writer who graduates to the position of an editor and
not vice-versa. So there is no confusion of roles here. For example,
in a newspaper, the news editor ( a position somewhat similar to
Technical editor in Tech Comm) is expected to have the ability to
write well. But a Staff Correspondent (comparable to a Technical
writer for our purpose) is not required to posses any editing skills.

This is just one of the possibilities for standardizing the
designations in Technical Communications. Janice talks about another
possibility using the hyphenated or slashed title. I suggest we could
go through the merits of each option to arrive at the best fit
designation.

Raj

On 11/27/07, Janice Gelb <Janice -dot- Gelb -at- sun -dot- com> wrote:
> Raj Machhan wrote:
> > Editor as a designation has its moorings in the print media. It is widely
> > used to describe the pecking order in newspaper and magazines. So we have
> > sub-editors, deputy editors, assistant editors, associate editors and so
> on,
> > with the editor-in-chief as the top boss.  However, the job profile of
> these
> > editorial positions (excluding the overworked sub-editors, who lie at the
> > bottom of the pile) also involves a fair amount of writing.
> >
> > I do not see any reason why we cannot apply the same structure, in a
> limited
> > way, to positions  in a Technical Communications set up. So instead of
> > having designations such as "technical writer editor", or "technical
> writer
> > and editor" we could simply put it as "technical editor", "sr technical
> > editor" and so on. The designations need to be standardized to avoid
> > confusion.
> >
>
> My job is that of a technical editor and although
> I have written some of our internal tools documentation
> manuals, that is not my primary job function. I imagine
> the writers on here will object as much as I do to a
> job title that implies that their primary function is
> to edit! Editing and writing are different jobs with
> different responsibilities and although often people
> must do both in their working environment, that doesn't
> mean that the titles can or should be combined.
>
> I don't think that writers who occasionally do peer
> editing to catch overlooked obvious errors because their
> company does not employ editors should append "editor"
> to their titles. You only need to invent a hyphenated
> or slashed title if your editing responsibilities are
> equal to or on the same professional standing as your
> writing responsibilities.
>
> -- Janice
>
> ***********************************************************
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