Editing
To me, editing is a multi-step process that involves more than one or two people marking up a piece of paper. To ensure every article in The ReMarker is structured, thoughtful and free of style rules, I start the editing process early in the production cycle and don't stop until the newspaper goes to print. I also believe the strongest edits that help my staff members develop as writers come from working with them. Rather than returning their articles marked up, I always either sit down and go through their entire piece with them or write copious notes and let them know they can contact me to talk about any suggestions I have made.
THe Process
From a first draft to the printed page, every story is looked at by many different people. Below is a flowchart of where a story goes once it's first turned in.
STYLE RULES
Every staff member is well-versed in our two main guidelines for style rules on The ReMarker. Both the AP Stylebook and the St. Mark's style rules sheet are always available when we are editing stories.
Staying consistent with journalists across the country, we use the AP Stylebook when editing any story.
Many questions when editing are directly related to St. Mark's. Everyone on staff has a readily available copy of this sheet which entails many style rule errors that come up.
Editing a story
Below is an example of my edits on a ReMarker story. I included notes on my thoughts behind each edit made.
I cut some of the flowery language used in the opening
I add a hyphen where it is needed
Feeling the jump from lead to story is abrupt, I suggest a smoother transition
I note that a new paragraph should be created when starting a quotation
The speaker in this quotation needs to be identified
Because I notice a question mark, I suggest that they double-check the name of this teacher in school archives
The writers left out the word "in"
I suggest that the writers simplify a wordy sentence
I removed unnecessary words in a parenthesis
To follow AP Style, the writers need to write out the full location
I remove an Oxford comma
I notice a comma splice and remove it
I thought the use of em-dashes would make more sense than commas to set apart this phrase.
At the end of every story, I will write a few pointers and notes that came up while I was reading the article.