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The Art or Science of Editing
Like many other human traits, the orientation toward editing is a combination of nature and nurture. The nature part, in my case, are inherited “educator genes” and “accountant genes”, which set up a certain attention to detail and a certain tendency toward rigor, or precision. The nurture part comes from a 36-year career in the Geosciences. Its emphasis on “pattern recognition” is an excellent skill for an editor.
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My earliest experience came in high school when a school newspaper article about me was titled “When you want something done, ask a busy person”. I became the editor of our senior year annual or yearbook. At university, my major professor taught me so much about spotting my own bad habits. He also taught me that “eternal vigilance” would not ensure an error-free document.
I remember distinctly the first time I was asked to edit the work of a colleague. I felt I had to ask the fellow if he really wanted his paper edited. Many times I had witnessed edits that amounted to correction only of a spelling error or two. I was into verb-subject agreement, the proper use of adverbs, replacement of passive gerundives, and more
precise, varied and colorful word choices. I will never forget that after he agreed, and I began, the red flush that crept up his neck and onto his face. Periodically, I had to check to confirm that he was still OK with what I was doing and wanted me to continue.
Fast forward a few years and I had the pleasure of being asked to edit all of the papers of a colleague at Shell’s Bellaire Research Center. Her specialization in the area of geochemistry complemented mine in lateral prediction / seismic stratigraphy and helped to broaden my toolkit.
In my very next assignment, a manager who had drawn a group of authors together to write the papers for the first volume of the Petroleum Basin Series on Divergent Margin Basins, asked me to mind his correspondence during the summer as he traveled just after retirement. By the end of the summer, AAPG asked me to become his co-editor.
Memoir 48 became, in 1990, the first AAPG volume to go to galley proofs from digital input. This was quite a feat at a time as only one paper came in on 5 ¼ inch disc, and it had been translated from the French original. The other papers had to be scanned or re-typed. And so began my drive to prevent transcription errors in data handling today.
As my career took its turns, I became a go-to person to help numerous friends and acquaintances spruce-up their resumes. A big thrill has been to help people at the Women’s Home fashion their first resumes from tales of their life experiences. For a year I wrote for and edited a service organization’s monthly newsletter.
These days I edit everything I see automatically; can’t help it. One example was the compulsive editing of some 50 fellowship applications for GCSSEPM. None of the professors or students ever saw my edits. I cringe and call out at many television ads. Spelling errors, typos, and grammar gaffes seem to invade every kind of publication in
the age of informal email, texting, Twitter and Facebook. For myself, well, I am a better speller than a typist and still have to be vigilant.
Your editing staff aims to bring you a good quality reading experience. We are not infallible, however, and hope that you will bear with us this year.
Now I’d like to introduce you to the unsung heroes, whom I refer to as HGS’ ‘pre-editors”. Each looks at the meeting abstracts and bios, most often before I do.
Charles Revilla has long enjoyed the reviewing and light editing earth science copy. After 15 years as an editor and occasional contributor to the HGS Bulletin, he takes pride in being a “necessary rung” in the ladder and I the knowledge that his efforts end up in the Bulletin readers’ hands.
Charles has an early recollection from eighth grade when he corrected his English teacher in class at the Appalachia (VA) high school. It was so natural a response he did not perceive he had done anything “wrong” until the same teacher spoke to him after class. We are glad the incident did not deter him from a life-long love of language.
In high school he was also editor of the class year book and the interest in editing stayed with him. He recognizes that it is a natural calling for anyone who realizes that they have to some degree a linguistic gift (nature referred to above?).
James Ragsdale has worked on the Bulletin for several years; he doesn’t recall how many. His father was a journalist and he grew up a compulsive editor. Sound familiar? He is too modest to elaborate on early journalistic success in the UIL tournament in his senior year in high school. So ask him about it. James worked four summers as a cub reporter for his father while in high school and college. Those were the good old days of teletypes, typewriters and Linotype machines. He has rolled with the times and now ‘tracks changes” with the best of them.
He edits everything he reads and cops to keeping a copy of “The Elements of Style” by Strunk and White beside his computer. When I learned of this I looked up at my own bookshelf and ….my copy was nestled between “The Elements of Grammer” by Shertzer and “The Elements of Editing” by Plotnik. Hmmm…spooky!
Ed Marks has joined our pre-editor ranks this year. He also got the bug as a young teenager. He learned to type and with a friend published a Jimmy Dorsey fan club newsletter. For those who may not know, Jimmy Dorsey was a prominent American jazz clarinetist, saxophonist, trumpeter, composer, and big band leader.
While at UT Austin, Ed edited his fellow students’ theses. He was inclined to go into the field of Micropaleontology after he met Helen J. Plummer. When she died, Ed was recommended to curate and install Plummer’s collection at the Paleontological Research Institution, Ithaca, NY; he published the results in the American Museum of Natural
History’s publication. When the Director of the Institution, Professor Harris, became ill, Ed stepped in to edit the papers for publication that were submitted to the Institution.
Ed enjoyed a long career with Unocal. While in Indonesia with them, he joined Dr Darwin Kadar, the head of the Indonesian Geological Survey, to edit and publish papers for the United Nations International Geological Correlation Program Conference.
To keep his hand in, he proofreads articles for friends, and his neighborhood’s monthly newsletter.
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