Technical Editing

by Carolyn D. Rude

This market-leading text has been thoroughly revised to reflect recent changes in technology, workplace practices and the global marketplace. The book progresses from concepts and basic copyediting to comprehensive editing, management and production issues. Coverage now includes a new chapter on client projects. Technical Editing takes a comprehensive approach to editing and defining editorial responsibility in terms of information design and the overall effectiveness of a document in helping readers understand and complete tasks. Expanding the concept of editing from a narrow focus on sentence-level revisions for correctness, this book encourages students to think about the effects of word choices, sentences, organization and design. Students learn that the measure of a "good" document is in part outside that document, in the document's "match" to the users' needs and the author's goals. The textbook with its supplementary Web site and instructor's manual offers a complete editing course, including materials for daily workshops and discussion and longer documents for graded assignments. In a password-protected portion of the Web site, instructors can also retrieve illustrations of edited versions as well as suggested responses to daily activities. Both focused and flexible, Technical Editing includes assignments carefully crafted to develop specific editing competencies and modular chapters that allow instructors to adapt the text to meet their own course goals and methods.

Genres: Writing, Nonfiction, Reference, School, Textbooks, Technical, College

480 pages, Paperback

First published May 1, 1991

Reviews

[Rachel Aranda · Rating 3 out of 5]

A book on Technical Editing that has a nice amount of details on jobs and the importance of technical editing. The visuals on markups were also useful since I was ignorant on some of them. The information is quite useful but it can turn into dull reading after a while. This is not a book to read for fun but to learn!

The biggest downside would have to be that if a person learning about technical editing wanted to read this book by themselves (yes some if us truly exist) then they'd never know the answers to the questions at the end of each chapter. The only way I was able to see about solving this problem was by taking a class at university that used this book and asking my professor. Another option is buying the teacher package that had the answers to the questions online but that's more money spent.

My feelings are mixed on this book but I can tell the authors researched and carefully decided on what topics they wanted included in this book. The effort is much appreciated, ladies!

[Ben H. · Rating 3 out of 5]

Quite informative, but extremely expensive.

[Tamera · Rating 4 out of 5]

Pretty good for a textbook

[Kaleigh Niemela · Rating 5 out of 5]

Hands down, best technical editing book out there!

[Annalee Christopherson]

Fantastic reference book

[Aaron Byers · Rating 3 out of 5]

Boring but needed for class. I guess if I was teaching this subject, this would be a good book. As a student, it didn't seem any better, or different, than any other textbook on the subject.

[Taylor Devarie · Rating 5 out of 5]

Excellent textbook on all aspects of Technical Editing, from working in a publishing house to working on contract individually, from copyediting conventions to general project management. I highly recommend this book to anyone interested in building skills and broadening areas of expertise as a professional editor. Currently rereading it (and I'm sure it'd be an excellent reference for the advanced editor - I'll let you know in a decade, haha).

[Daniela · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was the assigned text for a class I am taking in Technical Editing. I thought it was just OK. It did contain useful and important information that was presented fairly well. I don't have other related books to compare it too but it was a bit dry.

[Su · Rating 4 out of 5]

I don't usually give more than three stars to textbooks, if that tells you how useful this one is! I've never met Dr. Rude, but I can confirm from experience that Dr. Eaton is an extraordinary professor and knows her stuff. I would take this class every semester if I could.

[Becky · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was the assigned text for a class I am taking in Technical Editing. I thought it was just OK. It did contain useful and important information that was presented fairly well. I don't have other related books to compare it too but it was a bit dry.

[Connie · Rating 4 out of 5]

A good book about editing for technical documents.

[Margaret Reeves · Rating 4 out of 5]

Editing nerd, right here....

[Zenobia “Z” Redeaux · Rating 3 out of 5]

Found some typos...

[Jenna Mitchell · Rating 5 out of 5]

An excellent resource for learning editing conventions.

[Zack · Rating 3 out of 5]

Pretty good primer.

[Randy Hulshizer · Rating 4 out of 5]

Covers the bases.

[Sarah · Rating 4 out of 5]

For editing, this is a very helpful book. Personally I would have preferred this to focus more on in-depth copyediting because some of the comprehensive editing things seem like they would be covered in a Document Design class rather than in an editing book, but that's just me.

That being said, I have found this very enlightening. I never realized how time consuming copyediting can be or the complications that arise between an editor and a client.

Conclusion

If you're looking into doing freelance work or just want to brush up on your editing skills, read this. I'm probably going to be looking over this a bunch for both of those reasons.