I love editing <3

I'm a real dish in Simpsons form, aren't I?

Yesterday was dominated by editing my first major major document since November (I edited my best friend's novel). Like a lot of things that come through our office, it was loaded with errors, misuses, and inconsistencies, but that's what copyeditors are for, right?

My favorite thing about editing is that I get to play detective and use strategy to polish a text into a priceless gem; and while most of the texts I edit are dry, riddled with errors, and limited to a small audience, they all hold the same importance as a document that is going to be seen by millions of people. I take a lot of pride in making things shiny, presentable, understandable, and interesting.

The FD brochure was a nice test of all the skills I've acquired from being an English major. I don't think I've used my CMS, my AP manual, or my dictionary as many times as I did yesterday, but it served as a nice refresher to the things I am supposed to know. The challenge also lay within the errors themselves: instead of being large, glaring issues of fact, spelling, and circumstance, they were things that you could easily miss if you had read the text more than once. There were also a few sentences that were too long, unreadable, unnecessary, or ungrammatical, but my purple pen made everything better.

Even though I've only done about 5 outgoing documents for UMC, I'm getting better at adjusting how heavily I edit a document. When I look back to that moment in March 2007 when I first posted my ads on the bathroom doors of Jeff4--or when I first began to write for a non-academic forum—I can see how much I have grown. I'm less afraid to ask questions, I work more efficiently, I use a lighter hand (unless the document has so many errors that I have to change it dramatically or send it back to the author to fix), I know what to look for, and I've learned how to edit/ write according to a style.

Going from AP to CMS to University style—Web site (ISU) instead of web site (AP) or website (general usage)—is still challenging since the changes are so slight, but it's absolutely necessary given that each corporation/ house has its own subjective style rules (though I wish everyone could use the CMS. It's a lot more informative and organized than the AP manual). Going from style to style also helps you realize that language and grammar are subjective, but style is style. If a set criteria didn't exist, I think it would be more difficult to communicate our needs with others, especially in the written form.

The latter half of the day was spent reworking my articles on Ogonna and the "State Your Passion" campaign. Ogonna is coming along well, but the SYP article is..well..interesting. Since I turned it in, I learned that our director wants me to get a comment from a rapper, a mix master, someone in a rock band, and an athlete. I can smell a rock band from a mile away, but I have no idea where I am going to find a mix master in rural IL. It’s pretty bizarre, but I’m still going to deliver.