Other editing functions
In today's business environment where manpower and personnel are being increasingly limited by budgetary concerns, many technical editors may work on a staff of one or, at least, a very few other editors, where the technical editor must do all or participate in doing many of the other aspects of editing, primarily copyediting or designing graphics.
Copyediting
Copyediting usually involves correcting errors in English usage, grammar, and punctuation, among many other functions. Editors can most easily learn copyediting by simply being attentive students while in elementary or high school. Following the practical advice in a popular style guide, such as The Chicago Manual of Style will suffice for many copyediting tasks. Several other style guides are in common use, depending upon whichever one is best for a given project. Always inquire as to which guide(s) to use if the client has omitted explicitly stating or suggesting any style guides to use.
Be advised, however, that a corporate style guide, if any, usually trumps all other style guides in priority. Therefore, always inquire if any company’s style guides should or must be followed for any prospective copyediting task. Often, a novice client may leave it to the editor’s discretion about choosing any particular guides for the project. So, learning and having handy a few different style guides would bolster any credentials in this regard. These various books on style are reasonably priced investments for learning skills in this specialty of the editing business.
Copyeditor fees are usually determined from the total word count for the entire document. A prospective client, often a novice, might say that the document contains such-and-such number of pages when asking for a price estimate. The word count per page can vary tremendously due to several factors: typeface and font size used, page size, several included graphics (with no text to check), for starters. It is difficult to price the copyediting phase of a project without some information about the estimated word count.
Once a word count is known, then the copyeditor can estimate the number of manhours typically needed. As a convenient rule-of-thumb, copyediting rates might vary from a relatively slow rate of 500 words per hour for documents that contain numerous errors to around 2000 words per hour for documents that were well written, easy to read, and relatively error free. Picking an estimated rate of 1000 words per hour is often used initially as an estimate whenever not much is known about the project other than its total word count.
Line editing
Line editing—not usually requested by clients—is another term for minor rewriting done by copyeditors in order to transform the copy into better text. This manner of rewriting is usually performed as a special option chosen by authors who know in advance that their writings need this extra work. Authors who are not native speakers often employ inappropriate words and grammar that requires corrections in order to appear natural.
Editors should be especially careful when clients desire rewriting at any level so that both parties know exactly what is needed before proceeding. Sometimes, a client might say that only very minor rewriting is needed when facts and common sense dictate otherwise. What some clients believe is merely only line editing can sometimes really be full-blown, high-level rewriting that could amount to substantive authoring requiring several extra hours or, perhaps, even weeks for long documents. In any event, a scan of the document is required in order to assess whatever level of rewriting (if any) or copyediting that is needed.
Proofreading
Proofreading traditionally was the final check in the editing process, which is often neglected today. The two different concepts of copyediting and proofreading are very often used as replacements for the other. Whenever a client has a “proofreading” project, the prospective proofreader should ascertain whether copyediting or proofrading is warranted because so many now confuse these two concepts. Editors should inform clients about the true definitions of copyediting and proofreading so that there is no doubt about which of the two functions is meant.
Proofreading is very similar to copyediting except that proofreaders normally mark up errors of all types without further author involvement in order to see if everything is in order before the document is published. Proofreaders need to work very carefully because usually their markup is most often the very final check that is sent to the printers or publishers, who themselves usually make the necessary changes, if any. The original copyeditor might do the proofreading tasks in a small staff. However, using a different editor for the proofreading is preferred because two (or more) different eyes may find errors that the initial copyeditor missed.
Multimedia
Graphical artists or some editors produce the visual content for websites. Multimedia, often also termed graphics, is the term often applied to this area of expertise. Multimedia can involve very simple visual effects to full-blown animation or videos, including audio.
Website designers or editors are primarily responsible for incorporating multimedia into websites than actually producing them, as this field can get very complicated and consume large expenditures of time, effort, and money. Readily available software packages keep getting simpler and much more intuitive to use, so that even novices can produce some fairly striking multimedia. School children are often introduced to multimedia at very young ages as part of their elementary or middle-school education in most school districts.