by Jean Hollis Weber

Imagine these scenarios:

• You have started work at a new company or on a new project (as an employee or a contractor), where your work will be reviewed by a technical editor as well as by the Subject Matter Experts (SMEs).
• You are part of a growing writing team, and your company has just hired an editor to join the team.
• The material you write will be part of a multi-author project, and the editor will impose a "single voice" on the results.
• You are writing articles or books to be submitted to a commercial publisher, and one or more in-house editors will be working with you to produce the final product.

If you have never worked with an editor before, you may be wondering what to expect, and what the editor will expect from you. If you have worked with an editor before, you probably have some expectations about the relationship. Whether your past experiences were good or bad, you may be quite surprised to discover that the new editor's expectations are rather different from yours. This article looks at some aspects of the writer-editor relationship and what each of you can do to get the best results out of working together.