Tricks of the trade

TODAY there is an increasing invasion by professional editors into the field of technical writing. It is the task of these editors to take the rough draft prepared by engineers and scientists for use in manuals, government reports, and internal memos, and produce an accurate, smooth-reading version of the original text. As a result of this invasion there has developed a considerable skill among these professional editors in the procedural task of approaching the common engineering rough draft and from it producing the smooth final draft. This experience is real and can be described. The gist of this paper is an attempt to hand over the techniques developed by the professional editor to the engineer or scientist so that he may, in part at least, produce in his original draft a somewhat more refined product than he now does, if this technique can be transferred, the rough drafts will, of course, be smoother; the engineer will have been forced to prepare his material more carefully, which has a beneficial effect upon the engineering thinking; and the final writing will, as a result, be closer to the engineer when it is published and read. Probably the most satisfactory way for me to demonstrate the tricks of the trade of the technical editor would be to define first the function of an editor and then to show some of his techniques.