The learning outcomes of university-level editing courses don’t match the skills required for technical editing jobs. How can editing programs improve?

College education keeps getting exponentially more expensive. With such a financial sacrifice, students expect their universities to prepare them for the workplace. In the field of technical editing, universities still have work to do in bridging the gap between the skills that editors are taught in the classroom and the skills that are needed in the workplace.

THE RESEARCH

Susan Lang of The Ohio State University and Laura Palmer of Kennesaw State University analyzed the discrepancies between university-level technical editing courses and job postings. Their 2017 article “Reconceiving Technical Editing Competencies for the 21st Century: Reconciling Employer Needs with Curricular Mandates” sought to provide advice for improving university editing programs.

Through reviewing a selection of job postings for technical editors, the researchers found that employers wanted editors who could also work with multi-media formats like audio, video, and visual design. The researchers also examined the descriptions of five technical editing courses at different universities. The courses focused more on copyediting, grammar, and editing markup than other technologies and skills that technical editing positions require. Lang and Palmer concluded that “technical editing courses require significant revision in order to meet the marketplace demands for new editing competencies” (2017, 307).

“Technical editing courses require significant revision in order to meet the marketplace demands
for new editing competencies.”

Susan Lang and Laura Palmer

Overall, Lang and Palmer analyzed very few sources for job postings, textbooks, and course descriptions. Their methodology section could be more specific. However, if read with those limitations in mind, their findings still give beneficial advice for educators. This study implies that there is a gap between student editor knowledge and future employer expectations, and it points toward the need for editing programs to stay current with employers’ needs.

THE IMPLICATIONS

Few universities offer dedicated editing programs, so most aspiring editors may have to major in an adjacent field like English, linguistics, or journalism. These majors may include one “editing” class that primarily teaches copyediting, substantive editing, and grammar, but “editing now encompasses more than spelling and grammar” (Lang and Palmer 2017, 307).

Instead of having a single course to teach technical editing, Lang and Palmer recommend that editing programs have at least two classes: one to teach advanced grammar and copyediting, and one to cover other aspects of editing, like how to edit for multi-media formats and genres, to give students an overview of skills necessary for magazine editing, web editing, audio editing, and more. 

As a constantly evolving and improving field, technical editing needs academia to evolve with it. By maximizing the available editing-related curricula in their programs, universities can also maximize their students’ opportunities for success after graduation.

To learn more about Lang and Palmer’s recommendations for improving editing programs, read the full article:

Lang, Susan, and Laura Palmer. “Reconceiving Technical Editing Competencies for the 21st Century: Reconciling Employer Needs with Curricular Mandates.” Technical Communication 64, no. 4 (2017): 297–309. https://www.jstor.org/stable/26464505.

—Karlie Kelsch, Editing Research

FEATURE IMAGE BY PAVEL DANILYUK

Find more research

Take a look at this article by Hope Jones to learn more about educating future editors: “Peer Editing to the Rescue!”

Read Susanna Bergeson’s article “Why Fortnite Needs Editing Too” to explore how the field of editing is expanding to new genres.

Read Stephanie Argy’s article “The Role of the Developmental Editor in Emerging Forms of Narrative” to learn how editing can be applied to new forms of storytelling.