"William Sommerwerck" wrote in message
...
I'm currently editing articles for "Electronic Design".

My compliments. I read the printed edition and find
the articles to generally quite acceptable.

Thank you. Did you like "Did you buffer the buffered buffer?". That was
one
of my edits.

I'm not the only editor, of course. They have full-time writers and
editors
who do a very good job.

snipped mostly accurate observations about bad writing

I've scribbled a few articles in the distant past. I could almost
recognize my original article buried in the published version.

That suggests the original had significant problems. (I don't /know/, of
course.) I have carte blanche to completely rewrite articles if I think it
necessary. Many go through an extremely heavy edit -- and sometimes major
rearrangement -- which the authors generally tolerate. (I would /like/ to
think they look at the edited piece and accept it as a significant
improvement. The late Bob Pease didn't. He told me my edits didn't
contribute anything. That's about what Beethoven said about Haydn.)

In some cases I'm asked not to disturb the original style too much. I just
finished editing a piece about the advantages of custom analog ASICs, for
the purpose of not only cutting costs, but avoiding counterfeit devices.
The
author had a fun, engaging style, which I didn't have to alter in the
process of cleaning up his writing (mostly correcting grammar errors and
tersifying here and there). Indeed, my edits actually pushed the piece
/closer/ to the original style.

However, those are minor compared to what the magazines do
to themselves. Authors are told to "not worry about style" and
just supply the facts and details. The magazine editors will take
care of making the article presentable. Permit me to offer some
praise and sympathy.

There are articles so bad I feel my skull is about to explode. (In one
case,
the article was so awful and required so much time that I asked for a bit
extra, which I got.) But I keep telling myself that, if engineers could
write, I wouldn't have this job.



Unfortunately, I think that the skill levels of many editors, don't match
those which you seem to possess. I think that many believe that just because
an article has been passed to them for 'editing', it must then be altered
and generally 'messed about' in order to justify the fact that it *has* been
passed to them, and that they have earned their fee. I have had articles
that I've written, totally mauled by an insensitive hand. Words and phrases
that I've chosen very carefully have been changed or removed, resulting in
(sometimes) a complete reversal of the intention of a whole paragraph, let
alone a sentence, indicating that the editor had no understanding of the
subject material, nor the people who were its targeted readers.

I have also had grammatically correct structures changed into ones that are
not, and correct spellings changed for wrong ones. By the same token, I
became very close to the editor of one magazine that I wrote for, and he
told me that my copy was a pleasure for him to work with, because the only
'editing' that he ever had to do to it, was an occasional slight precis-ing
of a paragraph to make the article fit the space available. This was always
done very carefully and sensitively so as to impact on the content as little
as possible.

I think that one of the main problems with the publishing industry in this
regard, is that these days editors tend to be self-employed contractors who
find themselves editing a great deal of very varied subject material, so
have to employ the same basic 'one size fits all' techniques to those works,
and that's where it can go wrong. In days gone by, an editor was an employee
of the magazine, and usually had a deep understanding of both the subject
matter and the people who would be reading it.

As a slight aside, you mention that some people write as they speak. Some of
the best technical publications that I have read, have been written in this
style. One that springs to mind was a booklet on repairing Bally pinball
tables, written by one of Bally's in house service team. It was written
exactly as one engineer would talk to another, and was both amusing and
practical. A perfect joy to read.

Arfa