Learning to edit yourself

["Geoff Hart (by way of \"Eric J. Ray\" <ejray -at- raycomm -dot- com>)" <ght -at- MTL -dot- FERIC -dot- CA>]

Deborah Cooper wondered <<Does anyone ... know of any online guides
to editing? That is... guides to help you learn how to edit your own
work - similar to style guides, but geared toward editing (grammar,
etc.) or grammar guides... or special things to watch out for.>>

There's no substitute for someone else's eyes when editing your own
work: you're simply too close to it to be objective, plus everyone
has grammatical or stylistic blind spots that only someone else can
pick up. (Speaking as an editor, that applies to editors too, btw.)
As for online guides, there's no advantage that I'm aware of over
printed guides, and several disadvantages, so I haven't made any
effort to locate one. That being said, techwr-l is probably your best
"online guide" for issues that involve _substantive_ editing in the
field of technical communication (that is, editing that focuses more
on principles of instructional design and technical communication
rather than sentence- or word-level grammatical issues).

If you want to keep Eric happy and at the same time get a broader
spectrum of grammatical advice from professional editors than
techwr-l offers, try subscribing to the copyediting discussion group.
Send the following message:
        subscribe copyediting-l
to
        listserv -at- indiana -dot- edu
and prepare to be flooded. If you think techwhirlers are verbose, you
ain't seen nothing 'till you've watched a group of copyeditors
debating issues of grammar and editing. But it's still my favorite
online editing resource, and a friendly place to stay too.
--Geoff Hart @8^{)}
geoff-h -at- mtl -dot- feric -dot- ca

"Microsoft Word: It grows on you... but with a little fungicide,
you'll be feeling much better real soon now!"--GH

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