On Fri, May 23, 2008 at 1:09 PM, SlimVirgin slimvirgin@gmail.com wrote:
On 5/23/08, Charles Matthews charles.r.matthews@ntlworld.com wrote:
[...] We should concentrate, mainly, on having articles well organised, so that people can find the information they want. Once that's done, improving readability is an essentially trivial copy-editing function.
Copy editing isn't that easy, Charles. I know we have a few editors who make it look easy, but that's because they're very good at it. For most of us, it can be a struggle.
And I think that people who have the background (professional or educational) to copyedit aren't the ones most attracted as contributors. And there's a huge ramp-up curve in learning all the other local style guide stuff, which is organized around content not style.
We're not copyeditor friendly.
That said, a few loud, outgoing copyeditors wandering randomly around dropping gems of rewrites here and there might have a wonderful effect. If anyone knows such people, either in the project or outside, encouraging them to work on that point would be a very useful thing. Getting past the current copyeditor unfriendliness would be a great long term improvement.