Quote:
Originally Posted by kacir
Recently I talked to an author of technical book and the editor practically destroyed his book. The book wasn't in English. That moron (editor) was even translating acronyms like SOAP (Simple Object Access Protocol) into original language, as if the SOAP was the thing you use to wash your hands.
And the author was helpless, because the editor was hired by publisher and had priority.
After the edit, the book was beautifully grammatically correct, but compete nonsense from programmers point of view.
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I wish I could say that this was a rarity, but it isn't. No editor I know is capable of working in all fields. As I have said before, I specialize in medical and education. What that means is that I not only have extensive experience in those areas but that I work to maintain my knowledge skills in those areas. Perfect, I'm not, but good I am -- in those areas.
Ask me to edit fiction and I'm a fish out of water. I know this, so I don't accept such work. OTOH, I can identify many of the failings in a work of fiction because those failings are similar to the failings that would appear in any work, plus it isn't difficult to apply the experience gained from general reading over the years.
Yet, I would not "edit" the work of fiction; instead, I would read it and give an overview of problems.
This is the failing of editors; they do not recognize their limitations. The failing of publishers is that they believe one editor is as good as another, which isn't true. A second failing is that they are guided/governed simply by cost, rather than quality. Low cost does not always mean low quality, but too often does.