The likelihood is that, as an editor, you’ll need to quickly become familiar with subjects that you’ve either never studied or covered in the dim and distant past (a vague recollection of high-school physics can go a long way!).
Often, Proofed will be asked whether we have an expert in a certain topic, and while we often do, the most important thing is that we can provide an editing expert.
Launch the microlearning module below to learn more about editorial research skills and to test your knowledge using our interactive quiz.
Alternatively, read on for a text-only version of the microlearning.
There are two main types of unfamiliar terms from an editorial perspective:
The second type is more dangerous, as it’s sometimes difficult to distinguish them from thesaurus overuse or non-fluent English.
Consider the following sentence:
In physics, radio waves propagate through the atmosphere, enabling wireless communication over long distances.
If you’re not familiar with the field, you might think that the use of “propagate” is unusual or inappropriate, as it is most widely known as a term used in botany (“apple trees propagate by grafting”) or in general parlance (“the rumor propagated quickly”). However, in physics, the term “propagate” refers to the process of transmitting or transferring energy, waves, or particles through a medium or space.
You can use Google (or Google Scholar) to check the usage of unfamiliar terms. When you do so, you may find you need to include more than just the term in question to get a useful and accurate result.
Artificial intelligence (AI) chatbots, such as ChatGPT, can also be used in a similar fashion, with the caveat that they may produce inaccurate information. Undoubtedly, AI chatbots will get more and more accurate over time, but as at May 2023, you should double-check any information they return using a Google search of reputable sources.
Try asking ChatGPT:
Note: Be very careful (for privacy and confidentiality reasons) about what you put into AI chatbots. Snippets of sentences and individual sentences that are common knowledge are fine, but do not drop in large chunks of text or any confidential or sensitive information.
It’s sometimes difficult to remember minor dialect variations such as where a period goes in relation to a quotation mark or which type of dash you should use. Similarly, questions about obscure points of grammar can sometimes be difficult to find answers for.
Proofed has some good resources that collect all these together:
Otherwise, there are various reputable style guides that can be found online, for example:
By “international English,” we mean English that accommodates or disregards dialectical differences. As the Economist and the Guardian are based in the UK, they will slightly favor UK usage, but there may be some crossovers.
In addition to search tools, dictionaries, and style guides, there are various free online resources that can be really useful to you as an editor. Below is a (definitely) non-exhaustive list of some of the author’s favorites.
This has been a very brief introduction into using research skills to improve your editing of both general and specialist documents.
By checking reputable sources using the multitude of tools freely available online, you can enhance the overall clarity, coherence, and credibility of your editing.
Remember to communicate with your customer and explain the reasoning behind any editorial decisions you make. If there is no definitive answer to an editorial issue, then you should choose what appears to be the most likely approach, taking into account any evident preferences in the customer’s chosen style guide(s).
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