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Originally Posted by Katsunami
So... Where can one study to become a professional editor, apart from just studying one or more languages?
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I probably learned my best techniques on Baen's board. They have a board there for submitting stories and there's a group (and anyone who joins) who critique the story. You hang around there long enough you start to get some very good pointers for storyline editing, what failed for people, what worked and so on. You start to learn how to separate what to listen to and when as well as get exposed to a variety of writing styles and even genres.
There are several members (they are mods and I think have been selected/trained by Baen over time) who are very well-versed in critiquing stories and if you hang around for a few months, you start to learn what works well and what doesn't. As a writer, you learn to take some cruel beatings and some kind ones. As someone offering critiques you learn to pull your punches in a bit. If you go in not knowing the value of telling someone what DOES work as well as what doesn't, you will probably come out of there with that very valuable lesson. The best editors know this value and I don't mean saying, "Book is good" as the overall statement.
To some degree you might pick up on which things are most important to suggest, but some of that is probably learned via reading.
And that said, one of the best teaching techniques out there is: Read and read widely.
The copy editing part is just training. I actually took a couple of classes in college because I have a degree in technical writing. Part of that was copy editing. You can take courses in all the printing and formatting techniques as well, although those are necessary for being an editor.
To become a technical writer there were tests for proficiency in grammar, copy editing and various writing techniques.
There are a few places that do editing for indie writers and I think one or two of them offer some feedback on whether you are going to be able to copy edit (you pass a three-page test or so). But storyline editing doesn't get tested very often. It's kind of bundled in as an editor job so a lot of people assume it's happening when it often isn't unless you know what to ask for.