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New thread: at what point can you justify a F/T editor?
Subject:New thread: at what point can you justify a F/T editor? From:Faith Weber <F -dot- Weber -at- EASYSTEMS -dot- COM> Date:Mon, 20 Jan 1997 11:29:33 -0800
OK, here's a new question for you Techwhirlers who've worked with
editors,
as well as those of you who are editors.
I have a very small group right now, but it may grow significantly in
the coming
year or two, just as the rest of our small company is growing. Since I
am a
writer/manager, and would like to continue as such, it's difficult for
me to spend
adequate time focusing on consistency, style, and terminology issues.
However,
I could definitely tell someone else enough about what I want in those
areas so
that he or she could enforce it. Because we are gradually changing from
a set
of command-line driven, OpenVMS products to a set of GUI-driven, Windows
NT
products, there are a lot of style changes required. Our doc set is
about 5000
pages. We're working on getting a lot of it into Windows Help to make it
more useful and reduce the intimidation factor of receiving a huge box
of documents,
but that's the approximate volume we're dealing with.
I'm beginning to think the best thing for us would be to hire a
permanent editor who
could focus on updating and maintaining our style guide, and ensuring
that the group
produces consistent, well-structured, well-written, good-looking work.
My strengths are
writing, and understanding and explaining technical issues, not editing,
so I don't think
it would be a good role for me to take on.
Any ideas re: at what point it makes sense to have a full-time editor?
Are there any
standard metrics for the ratio of editors to writers, requirements for
an editor based on
pages of documentation, or other measures?
Thanks in advance!!
Faith
------------------------------------------------------------------------
------------------------------------------------
Faith Weber
EA Systems Inc.
VMS Mail: weber -at- easi -dot- com MS Exchange: F -dot- Weber -at- easystems -dot- com
Web: http://www.easystems.com/
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