Reply: How much knowledge is enough/too much

Subject: Reply: How much knowledge is enough/too much
From: Geoff Hart <geoff-h -at- MTL -dot- FERIC -dot- CA>
Date: Wed, 8 Mar 1995 13:11:11 LCL

Glenda Jeffrey wrote: <<I would like to know just how much "technical
savvy" I should be able to expect from a professional technical
editor.>>

The cliched answer is that the difference between a "technical"
writer/editor and "the other kind" is that technicals understand what
they're editing and the others don't. (Don't shoot me... that was
intentionally sarcastic!)
A better answer is that it's damn near impossible to edit something
you don't understand. You needn't understand as much as the engineers
do, but you must understand enough to converse knowledgably with them.
The best answer is that you must understand as much as your
audience does... that way, if the writer says something you don't
understand, you can be sure that the audience won't understand it
either. I go one step further: if I can understand it, but have to
work at it, it's likely that some of the audience won't be able to
work through the logic at all and will misunderstand.
There's one problem with these answers: by the time you understand
something thoroughly, you start making the same assumptions that the
writers make, If the audience doesn't share those assumptions, they
won't understand. The risk of overfamiliarity is that you stop being
an advocate of the audience. To hedge my bets and provide a safety
margin, I role play (pretend) being stupider than I really am. (This
isn't always easy... double meaning intended!) If playing dumb makes
it harder to understand what the author is saying, I revise. Note that
I _don't_ play dumb with the author; I pretend that I'm a
below-average member of the audience. A very subjective business, but
it seems to work well.
BTW, most editors are in the business because they like learning
new things. If you've got a problem with one of your editors, talk to
him/her and try to explain. Interestingly enough, the act of
explaining something reveals whether you really, truly understand what
you're trying to explain. Lots of neat insights come that way!
--Geoff Hart #8^{)}
(The Forrest Gump of editors? Perhaps a mite too hairy...)


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