Re: Online vs paper-based editing

["Melissa Nelson" <melmis36 -at- hotmail -dot- com>]

I generally attempt online editing, however if given the oppurtunity and 
right circumstances, I prefer to edit on paper. I think this is simply 
because that is how I learned how to edit back in the old days when I was 
going to college the first time. I had to write everything out before 
putting it on a typewriter...yikes, those were the days eh? There just seems 
to be something almost refreshing and reassuring about being able to hold 
what I am editing.

Just me showing my age. :)

Melissa





From:  Diane Haugen <WhiskeyCreek -at- wcdd -dot- com>
To:  "Jeannine Klein" <jmek66 -at- gmail -dot- com>, techwr-l -at- lists -dot- techwr-l -dot- com
Subject:  Re: Online vs paper-based editing
Date:  Tue, 19 Jun 2007 08:15:26 -0500
>At 5:35 PM -0700 6/18/07, Jeannine Klein wrote:
>
> >Do most of you edit on the computer screen or on a paper printout...Also,
> >do you know of any studies on the question? (I can't find anything in the
> >STC archives.)
> >
>
>  From reading the early responses to your question, I would say that I
>am quite a bit in the minority regarding online editing versus paper
>editing.  Probably because I do not do a lot of editing for industry,
>and because the editing I do is often more substantive editing rather
>than the kinds of changes which lean toward the copyediting end of
>the continuum.
>
>I have edited for publishing companies on line, but this kind of
>editing has always involved changes which did not change the order or
>structure of the document.  I think this is the key issue with online
>editing as opposed to paper editing.  If there are organizations
>changes, paper editing, at least for me, is necessary.
>
>When I was at Carnegie Mellon, now over fifteen years ago, there were
>a lot of researchers studying online editing as opposed to paper
>editing.  Christine Haas was one of the students who specialized in
>this.  However, I haven't been able to locate any of her work online
>just now. If the Document Design Center at Carnegie Mellon still
>exists, I'm sure you could get copies of some of their research
>documents done at that time involving online editing as opposed to
>paper editing.
>
>I do remember that Christine had documented that sentence level
>changes online worked well, but large organizational changes were
>difficult online because the editor lost track of the document's
>whole picture.  That is, it's a lot harder to keep ten pages in your
>head and scroll back and forth between them moving parts around
>online than it is on paper.
>
>I find in my own writing that I can compose the first draft online,
>make many changes on line (usually the "through out and recast kind
>of changes," but once the document grows to a few pages, the large
>organizational changes that are needed simply do not show up without
>printing out the document and looking at it, preferably a day or so
>later.
>
>The reality is that in the workplace, this simply may not be
>possible, either because of time constraints or because by the time
>an editor gets the document in the workplace, the organization is
>fixed. However, I suspect some of your difficulty is that the whole
>issue of online editing versus paper editing involves a lot of
>variables which make it difficult to generalize.
>
>Diane
>--
>===============================
>Diane Haugen
>Whiskey Creek Document Design
>http://www.wcdd.com/index.html
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