I love to learn. I’ve been fortunate enough in my life to have had the opportunity to try my hand at a great many things. Some of them have been flashes in the pan, and others have really stuck. Editing is one of them, partly because it’s learning on a micro level, all the time.
Every single piece of writing that I work on, I come away having learned something new. Often, I’ll go to make a change, based on intuition, and I’ll do some research into it to back it up in case it gets queried. At the end of those rabbit hole investigations, I’ve got something newly solidified and added to the permanent toolkit.
If I’m honest, initially I thought of editing as fixing things that were ‘wrong’, applying the ‘rules’ of English — knowledge that I mysteriously possessed, and many others did not.
English is so fluid that you can pretty much always change something. And as a newbie editor, ten years ago, I thought making changes meant I was DOING MY JOB.
But the truth of the matter, as time and experience have taught me, is quite different. I can facilitate, I can finesse, but ultimately I will always aim to preserve an author’s voice and message.
Now, I embrace the evolution of language — that’s part of its charm and utility. Dealing with language is like a puzzle; it will never be finished, but there is so much satisfaction in being able to add to the picture.
There are no hard and fast rules — there is only what most people accept at any given moment in time. English itself is a delightful mongrel, and it’s misguided to try and keep it on a leash. As author James D Nicoll said: “We don’t just borrow words; on occasion, English has pursued other languages down alleyways to beat them unconscious and rifle their pockets for new vocabulary”.
Working with English, getting to know and understand its quirks and intricacies, allows us to communicate in the way we want to — whether that’s to be clear and concise, or playful, or evocative. Language is not a set of rules engraved on some enduring monolith. It is the chisel.