Behind every publishing industry big or small is an editor hard at work in making a manuscript shine. The tasks of proofreading and editing are performed behind the scenes despite playing a vital role in transforming a rough draft into a riveting final copy.
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From fictional novels to academic papers, professional editors perform rigorous tasks to ensure that manuscripts are easy to read, engaging, and up to date with literary style guides. Here, we dig deeper into the daily life of professional editors.
Morning Groundwork
A professional editor may start the day with a piping hot cup of coffee to prepare for the tasks ahead and lay out the day’s priorities. This includes cycling through a flurry of emails and reviewing pending deadlines. Tasks for the day could include proofreading a draft for a novel, editing a manuscript, or providing feedback to clients about their document. Editing documents—which involves correcting grammatical errors, spotting punctuation mistakes, refining sentences, and ensuring that the narrative flows consistently from beginning to end—and, on top of that, proofreading them will take hours.
Midday Office Grind
After a re-energizing lunch, editors at editing services emerge from isolation to collaborate with clients, writers, and colleagues. During afternoon brainstorming sessions with colleagues, team members may discuss how current projects are developing. These sessions are meant to resolve any issues that editors and their teammates may encounter.
Editors may also communicate with clients and writers to provide feedback and updates on project progress and with other departments. In some cases, editors have to coordinate with senior editors, marketing personnel, and the publisher.
In most cases, revisions are needed before a project can be sent back to a client or publisher. A professional editor’s work may also be reviewed by a senior editor before manuscripts or documents are emailed back to clients.
Afternoons at an Editing Service Company
After lunch, professional editors return to their desks with fresh eyes after a break from the computer to spot some errors they may have missed earlier in the day.
Editing tasks can become more intensive in the afternoons, especially if deadlines loom at the end of the day. Documents are dissected line by line. Editors read through several pages to make sure that the narrative flows seamlessly. Editors will comb through manuscripts to enhance readability.
Clients may also ask editors to fact-check content. This job entails double-checking historical dates, confirming statistical data for accuracy, and validating sources. Editing services may request additional imbursements for this task to maintain a document’s integrity.
The End of a Professional Editor’s Day
As an editor’s work day draws to a close, they shift their focus on tying up loose ends and preparing for the next day’s tasks. By this time, projects should be submitted and deadlines met. Aside from wrapping up their tasks for the day, editors can plan ahead or check new emails that they can reply to the next day.
A dynamic and progressive editor may review upcoming projects or allocate resources in advance, taking a moment to reflect on the day’s work and evaluate their own performance as a professional editor. Impartial editors can even identify areas where they can improve and figure out how to enhance their skills more effectively moving forward.
Beyond Typical Editing Tasks
To do a better job and stay relevant as a member of an editing service, the editor has to keep an eye on emerging industry trends, making an effort to learn about changes in language usage, developing writing styles, and technology advancements.
Professional editors should continue to improve their skills and stay on top of writing trends to keep ahead of the game. A dedicated editor continues to explore new techniques and genres to hone their editing, choosing to improve their skills further by attending library events, participating in writing workshops, or quite simply reading a book. Just as authors can sharpen their writing skills by reading voraciously, so too can editors.
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