Throughout my academic career, I served as an editor in multiple capacities, ranging from when I worked as a writing consultant and student editor of two different academic publications (Logos and Moon City Review) to editing for classes.
ENG 377: Scientific and Technical Editing
For this class, I editing a guide for faculty members on the Supplemental Instruction program at Missouri State University-Springfield using the Jet Propulsion Laboratory Levels of Edit.
- Supplemental Instruction Faculty Guide Original Document This is the original draft of the Supplemental Instruction Faculty Guide.
Jet Propulsion Laboratory Levels of Edit
The Jet Propulsion Laboratory Levels of Edit include the following stages:
1. Substantive Edit Supplemental Instruction Faculty Guide
During this stage, an editor checks for coherence, organization, and complete ideas. He or she also adds missing parts like tables of contents, title pages, and other major parts. In essence, any large scale changes to the item in question are made at this time.
2. Technical Edit
During this stage, the editor checks for accuracy in any math figures or scientific notations. For this particular document, there weren’t any, so I skipped this step.
3. Language Edit MSU SI Faculty Guide
During this stage, an editor checks for grammar and mechanics.
4. Format Edit Supplemental Instruction Faculty Guide
During this stage, an editor edits for consistent layout including fonts, colors, heading hierarchy, chart and graph design, and spacing.
5. Integrity Edit Supplemental Instruction Faculty Guide
During this stage, an editor ensures all parts of the text match, including in-text references to charts and graphs, table of contents with page numbers. An editor also checks that all phone numbers, email addresses, and web addresses work.
Also, we took a step further (not included in the Jet Propulsion Laboratory steps) and did a proofreading edit.
6. Proofreading Edit Supplemental Instruction Faculty Guide
During this stage, an editor looks over the entire document for anything he or she may have missed in earlier edits using a new set of editing marks.
7. Final Draft Supplemental Instruction Faculty Guide
This is the final draft of the Supplemental Instruction Faculty Guide. Also, as part of this class, I created the following documents:
Supplemental Instruction Faculty Guide Style Guide
- Style Guide Cover Pages
- Supplemental Instruction Faculty Guide Style Guide This document outlines the various stylistic and grammatical guidelines I followed while editing the guide.
- Supplemental Instruction Faculty Guide Style Sheet This document is a brief version of the Style Guide designed to allow writers to quickly look up important formatting guidelines.
- Supplemental Instruction Faculty Guide Index This document is a brief index based off of the Supplemental Instruction Faculty Guide.