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Originally Posted by Andrew H.
I'm a lawyer and we also produce documents for public consumption. In addition to the 24 lawyers doing the legal work, we also have 3 legal editors (who are also lawyers) and 4-5 full time proofreaders/nonlegal editors. During our busy season (which is sometimes 6 months long), we hire 5-6 additional proofreaders.
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And I assume your proofreaders are specialists, for the same reason medical proofreaders are. You need a level of knowledge of the terminology to be able to find errors.
Quote:
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Leaving aside proofreading, it's vital to have an editor because they can tell you whether something is really coherent - because I know what I'm trying to say, I will sometimes assume that what I've written says this...but that's often not the case. And this is as important in my work as it is in fiction writing.
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Indeed. Reading is a dialog. What the reader gets will depend on what they bring to the work, and may not be anything like what you meant. An editor can't guarantee your meaning will be communicated, but
can make it more likely, simply by making sure you have thought through what you are trying to say, and have in fact
said what you mean.
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Dennis