There are certain qualities that can go a long way to bringing an author's message to our readers.

By Denise Gable

A good editor’s job is so much more than fixing grammar or correcting errors. As editors we are the main link between the writer and the reader. That's true whether we're talking about words on paper or on the screens of digital devices. We create the connection.

According to Editors Only's Peter P. Jacobi, "Success for an editor comes through a thorough and sensitive knowledge of just who a publication's reader is. It comes from the editor's understanding of what a given writer is all about, what the subjects written of really means, and what language can do to give a certain jolt to the reader."

Necessary Attributes

Anna Yeadell-Moore, an editor in the Netherlands, proposes these five essential qualities of a good editor:

1. A good editor does not have an ego.
2. A good editor will be brutally honest with [writers], and will treat [them] and [their] work with respect.
3. A good editor has an obsessive eye for detail and is sensitive to inconsistencies.
4. A good editor will make sure that every sentence counts and is structurally sound.
5. A good editor can explain, in detail, the reason why every change is made.

Beyond those qualities, however, there are practical techniques that can help us accomplish our mission.

Nurturing

Jacobi emphasizes that an editor has an important role as a nurturer. He explains:

"An editor can be an article's staunchest friend, loving the peace into existence, if the writer permits it and if an editor knows what his or her job is truly all about.

"Not too different all this from what Scott Russell Sanders writes of in an essay, "The Inheritance of Tools," his reverential reverie about childhood and father and craftsmanship. He recalls:

My cobbled-together guitars might have been alien spaceships, my barns might have been models of Aztec temples, each wooden contraption might have been anything but what I had set out to make.

Now and again I would feel the need to have a chunk of wood shaped or shortened before I riddled it with nails, and I would clamp it in a vise and scrape it with a handsaw. My father would let me lacerate the board until my arm gave out, and then he would wrap his hand around mine and help me finish the cut, showing me how to use my thumb to guide the blade, how to pull back on the saw to keep it from binding, how to let my shoulder do the work.

Jacobi continues: "‘Don’t foresee it,' he would say. ‘Just drag it easy and give the teeth a chance to bite.'

"That often becomes an editor's dictum. It's advice for the writer so that the reader can be cornered and won over.

"It's the father at work, suggesting that without changes, a writer's verbally cobbled-together guitar might, indeed, be misread as a spaceship. Like a father, the editor says: 'This doesn't work. Let's see why not.' That's a step beyond evaluation. That's support. That's mature.

"Much to ask, but good editors know it comes with the territory.

"They know still more is required to bring writer and reader together in the pages of a publication."

Being Passionate

Silvia Justino, a Brazilian editorial director, told Media Associates International that she regards passion as an important quality for editors. She says:

"Passion is a fundamental quality of an effective editor. Passion is what stimulates an editor’s growth and development of needed qualities and skills. After all, the editor does more than correct grammar and spelling (as important as this is). The editor is passionate about attaining a final manuscript that is stylistically pleasing, elegant and true to the author’s voice."

Justino doesn't believe that an editor must necessarily be born with editorial passion. But that passion must be reflected in a person's satisfaction in their work, she claims.

But Beware

There is a potential downside, Justino warns: “Passion does pose one danger, however: perfectionism. As I see it, not every perfectionist is passionate about what he or she does, but every passionate person is a perfectionist. We must be careful to avoid extremes, because excesses are harmful. For instance, the exaggeratedly perfectionist editor will never be satisfied that a manuscript is truly finished -- becoming a victim of the ‘unfinished syndrome.’ Finding the proper balance is key to every passionate writer, editor or other professional. We must discuss this challenge openly with our fellow editors, and especially with the less experienced ones."

Mentoring

Imparting wisdom is an important role for us as editors. Jacobi suggests offering writers the opportunity for that. He believes writers would be wise to heed such editorial advice.

To illustrate this, Jacobi offers a hypothetical example wherein the editor tells the writer, "This article needs suspense, a rolling, roiling movement toward climax, a sense of the ticking clock, of time running out." Jacobi explains, "When the editor does so, the writer should acknowledge that urgency is missing in an article which lives or dies, depending on whether or not that needed tension can be inserted sufficiently and naturally."

How would that play out? Jacobi offers three suggestions for the editor to tell the writer:

--"Make me hear and see and feel. Bring me close." And when the editor does so, the writer should respond with enlivened verbiage, most likely spiced up usage of the right now nouns and the collaborating strong verbs.

--"Listen to the music of your voice." And when the editor does so, the writer should seek euphony in what year she has written. Seek and find, or seek and not find and create.

--"Don't squeeze the idea. Let it breathe." And when the editor does so, the writer should air out the scope of his piece, give its conceptual and informational space while not wasting it.

So there we have three themes: nurturing, being passionate, and mentoring. They can go a long way toward fulfilling our obligation: to play a practical and constructive role in bringing an author's message to our readers.

Denise Gable is managing editor of Editors Only.

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