Developmental editing is a form of writing support that comes into play before or during the production of a publishable manuscript, in fiction, non-fiction, and academic writing (including textbooks). As explained by Scott Norton in his book Developmental editing: a handbook for freelancers, authors, and publishers, developmental editing involves "significant structuring or restructuring of a manuscript's discourse". [1] Developmental editors are a type of language professional.
A developmental editor may guide an author (or group of authors) in conceiving the topic, planning the overall structure, and developing an outline—and may coach authors in their writing, chapter by chapter. [2] This is true developmental editing, but not the most common way of working. [1] A complete developmental edit involves addressing organization and restructuring the manuscript, such as moving content from one chapter to another and requesting additional content from the author. [1] More commonly, a developmental editor is engaged only after someone (usually the publisher) decides that the authors' draft requires substantial revision and restructuring. In these cases, developmental editing is a radical form of substantive editing. [3]
Irrespective of when the developmental editor is brought into a writing project, authors retain control over the document and are responsible for providing the content. Developmental editors typically don't make the changes directly to the manuscript but instead provide guidance and suggestions, although some "hands-on editing is used to illustrate principles of craft and mechanics." [4] An editor who creates significant amounts of content is no longer an editor but a contributing author or a ghostwriter. [1] After completing a developmental edit, an editor typically provides a letter to the author (often in the form of an email) explaining the main suggestions. [5]
A developmental editor aims to make a very marketable book that answers the intended audience’s needs. If by the end of a book/publication the reader doesn’t feel their needs have been met (that the publication didn’t deliver on its promises), then the developmental editor hasn’t done their job in helping meet the mission and vision set out in the book’s proposal. As the book proposal is based on solid research of audience needs and competitor publications, it’s really important to meet the aims set out in it. [6]
In a traditional publishing house, developmental editors work with an author to refine the manuscript. Many publishing houses today, however, do little developmental editing. Instead, they rely on agents to vet and submit manuscripts that are already in shape, reducing the work required in the developmental editing stage. [7]
Textbooks represent one book genre in which developmental editors are involved from the beginning, and often serve as the book's project manager. [8] [9] Their role is fundamental in textbook publishing because it is often the publisher, not the author, who decides on the book's content, scope, and level. Thus, developmental editors are often on staff at scholastic publishing houses. [10] In textbook publishing, the developmental editor may be responsible for creating the outline to guide the author's writing—and may also prepare short parts of text, such as legends, exercises, and supporting materials. [8] [9] Furthermore, the editor manages text length, edits the developing manuscript, and may instruct an artist regarding illustrations. [11]
When it comes to academic research, career advancement and funding depend on the number and quality of published papers. However, not all researchers receive formal training in how to write the specific genre of the research paper. These researchers can benefit from a language professional such as a teacher of academic writing or an authors' editor who provides substantive editing. In extreme cases, when the drafted manuscript does not match the genre and requires substantial restructuring before being able to meet readers' and peer reviewers' expectations, the language professional may offer developmental editing; however certain professional and ethical issues must be considered. [12]
There are two main situations when developmental editing in the research setting can be useful. [12] First, researchers may recognize their inability to produce a manuscript with reasonable chances of passing peer review in their target journal; they may contact a language professional for assistance and guidance during the writing process. In addition, researchers whose manuscript has suffered multiple rejections [13] from different journals may seek help resolving the complex issues raised by peer reviewers. In both cases, the type of writing support goes beyond author editing and becomes a form of academic mentoring. Mentoring programs using a developmental editing approach to teach scholarly writing skills have been offered, for example, by an international education journal [14] and at a US medical school. [15] Developmental editing is also at the heart of AuthorAID, a program that matches authors from the developing world with experienced scientist mentors and professional editors to improve the dissemination of knowledge from poor countries. [16]
Whether the language professional is an authors' editor, a teacher of academic writing, or a translator, the particularly challenging situation requires developmental editing alongside other writing support services (e.g., education about good writing practices, translation, and linguistic editing). Language professionals who support such novice researcher-authors know to perform editorial—not authorial—duties, so they avoid ghost writing if authorship is not wanted.
The tasks that developmental editors face in fiction are fairly different from those faced by editors working with nonfiction. [17] Adam O'Connor Rodriguez, senior editor at Hawthorn books, splits the tasks of developmental fiction editing into three main parts: structure, narrative, and language. [18]
Structure is the container that holds the story, including its length, order, and pacing. Narrative is all of the story elements such as characters, major scenes, pacing, and other big picture elements. Language includes dialogue, physical description, sensory information, and sentence structure (O'Connor Rodriguez 2018). [18]
For example, an editor would take a finished manuscript and provide ideas for fixing plot holes, inconsistencies in characters, scenes that need more depth, and scenes that need to be cut. [17]
Publishing is the activity of making information, literature, music, software, and other content available to the public for sale or for free. Traditionally, the term refers to the creation and distribution of printed works, such as books, comic books, newspapers, and magazines. With the advent of digital information systems, the scope has expanded to include digital publishing such as ebooks, digital magazines, websites, social media, music, and video game publishing.
The Chicago Manual of Style is a style guide for American English published since 1906 by the University of Chicago Press. Its 17 editions have prescribed writing and citation styles widely used in publishing.
Editing is the process of selecting and preparing written, visual, audible, or cinematic material used by a person or an entity to convey a message or information. The editing process can involve correction, condensation, organization, and many other modifications performed with an intention of producing a correct, consistent, accurate and complete piece of work.
Collaborative writing is a procedure in which two or more persons work together to create a written document or content. This writing tool takes many different forms, including but not limited to academic papers, reports, creative writing, projects, and business proposals. Success in collaborative writing involves a division of labor, unique insights, and most importantly writing techniques. Oftentimes through a shared document, collaborators add edits, provide feedback, and record changes. Collaborative writing is often used in professional as well as educational settings, utilizing the expertise of those involved in the collaboration process.(Storch, 2005)
Electronic publishing includes the digital publication of e-books, digital magazines, and the development of digital libraries and catalogues. It also includes the editing of books, journals, and magazines to be posted on a screen.
Academic publishing is the subfield of publishing which distributes academic research and scholarship. Most academic work is published in academic journal articles, books or thesis. The part of academic written output that is not formally published but merely printed up or posted on the Internet is often called "grey literature". Most scientific and scholarly journals, and many academic and scholarly books, though not all, are based on some form of peer review or editorial refereeing to qualify texts for publication. Peer review quality and selectivity standards vary greatly from journal to journal, publisher to publisher, and field to field.
An academic journal or scholarly journal is a periodical publication in which scholarship relating to a particular academic discipline is published. Academic journals serve as permanent and transparent forums for the presentation, scrutiny, and discussion of research. They nearly universally require peer review or other scrutiny from contemporaries competent and established in their respective fields. Content typically takes the form of articles presenting original research, review articles, or book reviews. The purpose of an academic journal, according to Henry Oldenburg, is to give researchers a venue to "impart their knowledge to one another, and contribute what they can to the Grand design of improving natural knowledge, and perfecting all Philosophical Arts, and Sciences."
Copy editing is the process of revising written material (copy) to improve readability and fitness, as well as ensuring that a text is free of grammatical and factual errors. The Chicago Manual of Style states that manuscript editing encompasses "simple mechanical corrections through sentence-level interventions to substantial remedial work on literary style and clarity, disorganized passages, baggy prose, muddled tables and figures, and the like ". In the context of print publication, copy editing is done before typesetting and again before proofreading. Outside traditional book and journal publishing, the term "copy editing" is used more broadly, and is sometimes referred to as proofreading; the term sometimes encompasses additional tasks.
Scientific literature comprises academic papers that report original empirical and theoretical work in the natural and social sciences. Within a field of research, relevant papers are often referred to as "the literature". Academic publishing is the process of contributing the results of one's research into the literature, which often requires a peer-review process.
Standard manuscript format is a formatting style for manuscripts of short stories, novels, poems and other literary works submitted by authors to publishers. Even with the advent of desktop publishing, making it possible for anyone to prepare text that appears professionally typeset, many publishers still require authors to submit manuscripts within their respective guidelines. Although there is no single set of guidelines, the "standard" format describes formatting that is considered to be generally acceptable.
The editorial board is a group of editors, writers, and other people who are charged with implementing a publication's approach to editorials and other opinion pieces. The editorials published normally represent the views or goals of the publication's owner or publisher.
Parenthetical referencing is a citation system in which in-text citations are made using parentheses. They are usually accompanied by a full, alphabetized list of citations in an end section, usually titled "references", "reference list", "works cited", or "end-text citations". Parenthetical referencing can be used in lieu of footnote citations.
Book packaging is a publishing activity in which a publishing company outsources the myriad tasks involved in putting together a book—writing, researching, editing, illustrating, and even printing—to an outside company called a book-packaging company. Once the book-packaging company has produced the book, they then sell it to the final publishing company.
The University of Hawaiʻi Press is a university press that is part of the University of Hawaiʻi.
AuthorAID is the name given to a number of initiatives that provide support to researchers from developing countries in preparing academic articles for publication in peer-reviewed journals. Phyllis Freeman and Anthony Robbins, co-editors of the Journal of Public Health Policy (JPHP), first suggested the name and concept in 2004 and published "Closing the ‘publishing gap’ between rich and poor" about AuthorAID on the Science and Development Network (SciDev.Net), in 2005.
An authors' editor is a language professional who works "with authors to make draft texts fit for purpose". They edit manuscripts that have been drafted by the author but have not yet been submitted to a publisher for publication. This type of editing is called author editing, to distinguish it from other types of editing done for publishers on documents already accepted for publication: an authors' editor works "with an author rather than for a publisher". A term sometimes used synonymously with authors' editor is "manuscript editor" which, however, is less precise as it also refers to editors employed by scholarly journals to edit manuscripts after acceptance.
Language professionals are individuals who support authors in publishing by helping produce documents of appropriate scope and quality. Their role is particularly important in the research setting, especially when the authors are not native English speakers but are required to publish in English for international communication. The work of language professionals falls within the language industry.
Mediterranean Editors and Translators (MET) is a non-profit, interdisciplinary association for language professionals who work mainly with or into English within the Mediterranean area. The association's members include translators, authors' editors, copy editors, writing and presentation coaches, teachers of academic writing, applied linguists, interpreters, professional writers and more. MET offers training workshops, an annual conference, networking and other opportunities of continuing professional development for its members. The activities of the association are guided by six objectives, summarized as follows:
The WAC Clearinghouse publishes peer-reviewed, open-access journals and books, as well as other professional resources for teachers and instructional materials for students. Writing-across-the-curriculum (WAC) refers to a formal programmatic approach within contemporary secondary and higher education composition studies that promotes the importance of writing in classes outside of composition.
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