Technical Editing

by Carolyn D. Rude, Sam Dragga

Takes a comprehensive approach to editing, defining editorial responsibility in terms of information design and the overall effectiveness of a document, not only the correctness achieved through sentence-level editing. This book includes a chapter on electronic editing and a chapter on editing in global contexts.

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

496 pages, Paperback

First published May 1, 1991

Reviews

[Rachel Aranda]

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.]

Quite informative, but extremely expensive.

[Tamera]

Pretty good for a textbook

[Kaleigh Niemela]

Hands down, best technical editing book out there!

[Annalee Christopherson]

Fantastic reference book

[Aaron Byers]

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]

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]

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]

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]

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]

A good book about editing for technical documents.

[Margaret Reeves]

Editing nerd, right here....

[Zenobia “Z” Redeaux]

Found some typos...

[Jenna Mitchell]

An excellent resource for learning editing conventions.

[Zack]

Pretty good primer.

[Randy Hulshizer]

Covers the bases.

[Sarah]

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.