Editors who rewrite are annoying. They take the author's voice away and often insert their own spin. Having said that, we all need editors. There are times I have read something about ten times and yet errors persist. I can't say why. Lol! makes me look like I'm in in denial. Another pair of eyes see the errors right away. The trick might be to revisit the writing a week later, but one usually doesn't have that much time.
My high school English teacher said to let your piece "gestate," although she pronounced it geshtate. Maybe we could compromise on a day, rather than a week? If you forget what you meant to write, you may see what you did write. Speaking entirely for myself, I think one issue is not so much lack of time as a misplaced sense of urgency around getting it out the door. It reminds me a bit of parabolic discounting.
Another compromise might be to have editors try to improve clarity and grammar but leave substance and structure alone. Brad and Noah get at some of the commercial resistance to that.
"... , I think one issue is not so much lack of time as a misplaced sense of urgency around getting it out the door." That is probably right. Will keep that in mind. Thanks!
I spent a good part of my post-research career doing technical writing and editing in addition to drug safety and regulatory affairs activity. There is no question in my mind that editors are critical to clear expository writing. I well remember having to take 'Subject A' aka freshman composition at UC Santa Barbara back in the mid 1960s as I did not get a high enough score on the SAT English Achievement test. That semester course was invaluable to teaching me how to write clearly (along with the one book that should be on every writer's shelf, Strunk and White's "The Elements of Style."
If you do enough writing and re-writing (editing), it becomes second nature, and your writing is much better as a result. I'm an avid reader of books, blogs and assorted other stuff and can quickly tell if something has been well edited. Maybe AI can help, I'm agnostic on this until there is more data but friendly old Microsoft has put a bunch of new things in all their apps (including Edge which I'm using to write this response) and it's quite intriguing.
Something is probably wrong with my eyes or the way I read. I did not see that one the first time and probably would've missed it the next time had you not pointed it out. I even went back to check that you're not making it up. Totally unfit for a national security job.
Count me as one who thinks that at least some writers need editors. As examples, the later works of Stephen Jay Gould definitely needed editing and Jonathan Israel could use a good editor. And the lack of copy editors is, as Alan pointed out, increasingly obvious.
Perhaps the issue is knowing when you need an editor and knowing when you don't.
"...And about one editor in twenty wants to make the piece theirs, or their bosses’, and it would have been better and easier for everyone if they had just written the peace from the beginning." Spell check is not an editor. Peace out dude.
Regarding needed communication, W. Ross Ashby invented his "Law of Requisite Variety" which used information in the strict, Claude Shannon sense, rather than the blather that it is often confused with. Stafford Beer was in the same camp with his cybernetics models of human organization.
As Norbert Wiener is referenced, I note in his revised text of "Cybernetics: or the control and communication in the animal and the machine" that in chapter 8, "Information, Language, and Society" he includes statisticiansm, sociologists, and economists as paid hirelings to manipulate the populace. I particularly like his turn of phrase for the controlling elite: "Lords of Things as the Are". This has become ever more relevant to today, if it wasn't when Wiener was writing after WWII.
If the reader reviews of "The Unaccountability Machine" look good, I will certainly add a copy to my home library.
Yeah, not buying it. I've had bad editors and good editors, but at the end of the day, mostly well meaning ones. You and Noah seem to be drinking the koolaid that your fans are your best editors. (When has that ever gone well long run?) Turn it on its head though. Everyone who knows your work but chooses not to subscribe to Substack is likewise an editor who has rejected your submission. Are they in the pile of useless editors? Beware the ego trap here.
Let's re-frame this. Not that editors are bad or unnecessary, but 'what should be the role of editors?' In the days of e-mail, comments, and instant news, editors aren't needed to pick a topic that readers want to read, or write the headline. In the days of Grammarly and such we don't need copy editors much. Since we aren't printing on paper, we don't need to be limited to 800 words. Regular readers also come to appreciate the voice of particular writers. A Noah or Brad are smarter than 99% of editors, particularly in their specialty. And no writer anywhere, ever needed a hierarchy of several layers of editors.
I don't subscribe to Noah anymore because his posts are too long for me, and oddly because I agree with him 95% of the time and wonder why I should read past the first paragraph. Nevertheless, 100k readers and growing pay him. Good.
So why do writers still need editors? To suggest when that extra point should be a parenthetical footnote rather than a paragraph. And when that word or idea is worth of a link for readers who don't already know it, rather than yet another paragraph. Writers do need independent perspective, not on the content, but to keep the reader moving. We still need editors, but in a limited and defined role.
Noah's Bloomberg experience seems to demonstrate that editors MATTER, maybe a lot. A good editor is a Godsend, a bad one can do damage. So why is the solution eliminating the editorial layer rather than improving it? Also, my impression is that the media landscape is already disintermediated with highly varied editorial practices and a very thin corps of editorial leadership. And that accounts for the huge volume of perfectly awful stuff I see on-line every day. Noah is focused on the thin slice that is the blogosphere, and maybe there his suggestion of getting rid of editors is not so destructive.
And yet, so many podcasters would have benefited from an editor. So for many "content creators" editorial feedback is essential for a good product.
Yet - product market fit, for a role that's essentially a teacher, is a discomfiting concept. The societal value of teaching lies largely in its broccoli.
While editors may be useful or not, what is apparent is the apparent demise of copy editors. Content errors of spelling are becoming rampant, both online, and in dead-tree works.
It used to be a joke that the Guardian newspaper was so riddled with errors that it was called the Grauniad. But then I noticed that the *gasp* BBC started having errors in its online content, and CNN followed. I can only assume that online content is no longer subject to any independent editing of the author's work. We may relay on spell and grammar checkers as aids, but Grammarly seems to be very flased and more competent writers than I have abandoned it as more trouble than it is worth. [As an ex-Brit, the differences in the use of the definite article between UK and US English is infuriating and looks just weird to my eyes. [I am OK with "s"s becoming "z"s, and dropping "u"s,, changing "ph" to "f", but I find grammar differences harder to assimilate.]
Until we get better spell and grammar checkers, may I suggest we rehire copy editors?
Editors who rewrite are annoying. They take the author's voice away and often insert their own spin. Having said that, we all need editors. There are times I have read something about ten times and yet errors persist. I can't say why. Lol! makes me look like I'm in in denial. Another pair of eyes see the errors right away. The trick might be to revisit the writing a week later, but one usually doesn't have that much time.
+1
My high school English teacher said to let your piece "gestate," although she pronounced it geshtate. Maybe we could compromise on a day, rather than a week? If you forget what you meant to write, you may see what you did write. Speaking entirely for myself, I think one issue is not so much lack of time as a misplaced sense of urgency around getting it out the door. It reminds me a bit of parabolic discounting.
Another compromise might be to have editors try to improve clarity and grammar but leave substance and structure alone. Brad and Noah get at some of the commercial resistance to that.
"... , I think one issue is not so much lack of time as a misplaced sense of urgency around getting it out the door." That is probably right. Will keep that in mind. Thanks!
I spent a good part of my post-research career doing technical writing and editing in addition to drug safety and regulatory affairs activity. There is no question in my mind that editors are critical to clear expository writing. I well remember having to take 'Subject A' aka freshman composition at UC Santa Barbara back in the mid 1960s as I did not get a high enough score on the SAT English Achievement test. That semester course was invaluable to teaching me how to write clearly (along with the one book that should be on every writer's shelf, Strunk and White's "The Elements of Style."
If you do enough writing and re-writing (editing), it becomes second nature, and your writing is much better as a result. I'm an avid reader of books, blogs and assorted other stuff and can quickly tell if something has been well edited. Maybe AI can help, I'm agnostic on this until there is more data but friendly old Microsoft has put a bunch of new things in all their apps (including Edge which I'm using to write this response) and it's quite intriguing.
There is no better skill than writing well.
May I also suggest another book: Economical Writing by Dierdre McCloskey. It also has all the major references.
"and it would have been better and easier for everyone if they had just written the peace..."
If that typo was not deliberate, it should have been.
:-)
On the other hand I'm less happy with "Weiner".
Weiner is a serious blooper. Maybe Chat-GPT hallucinated the reference? ;-)
Something is probably wrong with my eyes or the way I read. I did not see that one the first time and probably would've missed it the next time had you not pointed it out. I even went back to check that you're not making it up. Totally unfit for a national security job.
Most editors should just be proof readers, who would point out, for example, that you meant piece not peace.
Count me as one who thinks that at least some writers need editors. As examples, the later works of Stephen Jay Gould definitely needed editing and Jonathan Israel could use a good editor. And the lack of copy editors is, as Alan pointed out, increasingly obvious.
Perhaps the issue is knowing when you need an editor and knowing when you don't.
Oh, I am going to enjoy this.
"...And about one editor in twenty wants to make the piece theirs, or their bosses’, and it would have been better and easier for everyone if they had just written the peace from the beginning." Spell check is not an editor. Peace out dude.
spellcheck is not good at catching homonym typos...
Al least it is not dyslexic.
Regarding needed communication, W. Ross Ashby invented his "Law of Requisite Variety" which used information in the strict, Claude Shannon sense, rather than the blather that it is often confused with. Stafford Beer was in the same camp with his cybernetics models of human organization.
As Norbert Wiener is referenced, I note in his revised text of "Cybernetics: or the control and communication in the animal and the machine" that in chapter 8, "Information, Language, and Society" he includes statisticiansm, sociologists, and economists as paid hirelings to manipulate the populace. I particularly like his turn of phrase for the controlling elite: "Lords of Things as the Are". This has become ever more relevant to today, if it wasn't when Wiener was writing after WWII.
If the reader reviews of "The Unaccountability Machine" look good, I will certainly add a copy to my home library.
Yeah, not buying it. I've had bad editors and good editors, but at the end of the day, mostly well meaning ones. You and Noah seem to be drinking the koolaid that your fans are your best editors. (When has that ever gone well long run?) Turn it on its head though. Everyone who knows your work but chooses not to subscribe to Substack is likewise an editor who has rejected your submission. Are they in the pile of useless editors? Beware the ego trap here.
Let's re-frame this. Not that editors are bad or unnecessary, but 'what should be the role of editors?' In the days of e-mail, comments, and instant news, editors aren't needed to pick a topic that readers want to read, or write the headline. In the days of Grammarly and such we don't need copy editors much. Since we aren't printing on paper, we don't need to be limited to 800 words. Regular readers also come to appreciate the voice of particular writers. A Noah or Brad are smarter than 99% of editors, particularly in their specialty. And no writer anywhere, ever needed a hierarchy of several layers of editors.
I don't subscribe to Noah anymore because his posts are too long for me, and oddly because I agree with him 95% of the time and wonder why I should read past the first paragraph. Nevertheless, 100k readers and growing pay him. Good.
So why do writers still need editors? To suggest when that extra point should be a parenthetical footnote rather than a paragraph. And when that word or idea is worth of a link for readers who don't already know it, rather than yet another paragraph. Writers do need independent perspective, not on the content, but to keep the reader moving. We still need editors, but in a limited and defined role.
Noah's Bloomberg experience seems to demonstrate that editors MATTER, maybe a lot. A good editor is a Godsend, a bad one can do damage. So why is the solution eliminating the editorial layer rather than improving it? Also, my impression is that the media landscape is already disintermediated with highly varied editorial practices and a very thin corps of editorial leadership. And that accounts for the huge volume of perfectly awful stuff I see on-line every day. Noah is focused on the thin slice that is the blogosphere, and maybe there his suggestion of getting rid of editors is not so destructive.
And yet, so many podcasters would have benefited from an editor. So for many "content creators" editorial feedback is essential for a good product.
Yet - product market fit, for a role that's essentially a teacher, is a discomfiting concept. The societal value of teaching lies largely in its broccoli.
While editors may be useful or not, what is apparent is the apparent demise of copy editors. Content errors of spelling are becoming rampant, both online, and in dead-tree works.
It used to be a joke that the Guardian newspaper was so riddled with errors that it was called the Grauniad. But then I noticed that the *gasp* BBC started having errors in its online content, and CNN followed. I can only assume that online content is no longer subject to any independent editing of the author's work. We may relay on spell and grammar checkers as aids, but Grammarly seems to be very flased and more competent writers than I have abandoned it as more trouble than it is worth. [As an ex-Brit, the differences in the use of the definite article between UK and US English is infuriating and looks just weird to my eyes. [I am OK with "s"s becoming "z"s, and dropping "u"s,, changing "ph" to "f", but I find grammar differences harder to assimilate.]
Until we get better spell and grammar checkers, may I suggest we rehire copy editors?
Totally agree. Especially about the definite article; was brought up on the UK English (got it right this time!)