Technical Editing Online: The Quest for Transparent Technology

Abstract

Now that intranets have become the new model for information technology systems, we can expect that more organizations will adopt online document review and editing procedures. This may be problematic for technical editors. Survey studies published in 1992 and 1995 found that most technical editors were still editing on paper most of the time even though an overwhelming percentage of them had access to computers and expressed a positive attitude toward using computers for editing-related tasks. In this article I review discussions of online editing in the technical communication literature to understand how online editing has been constructed within the discipline and why many technical editors remain loyal to traditional paper-based procedures. I discuss a recent call for emulating handwritten mark-up and author queries electronically and compare this “technical fix” with the collaborative online editing affordances of the latest word processors. I then discuss studies of online reading and composition whose results suggest that the materiality of hard-copy editing procedures may contribute to some inherent advantages over online emulations of such procedures, or at least foster the widespread perception that certain advantages exist for hard-copy editing. I conclude by urging an open-minded and flexible but also critical perspective toward online editing technology. Such a perspective should help make the move to online editing a more positive experience for technical editors. It might also help them define a higher-level role for editing in the information and document development process.