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Technical editing involves reviewing text written on a technical topic, and identifying errors related to the use of language in general or adherence to a specific style guide.
Technical editing may include any of the following: correction of grammatical mistakes, misspellings, mistyping, incorrect punctuation, inconsistencies in usages, poorly structured sentences, wrong scientific terms, wrong units and dimensions, inconsistency in significant figures, technical ambivalence, technical disambiguation, correction of statements conflicting with general scientific knowledge, correction of synopsis, content, index, headings and subheadings, correcting data and chart presentation in a research paper or report, correcting errors in citations.
This activity ensures that documentation is of good quality. In large companies, experienced writers are dedicated to the technical editing function. In organizations that cannot afford dedicated editors, experienced writers typically peer-edit text produced by their relatively less experienced colleagues.
It helps if the technical editor is familiar with the subject being edited, but that is not always essential. The "technical" knowledge that an editor gains over time while working on a particular product or technology does give the editor an edge over another who has just started editing content related to that product or technology. In the long run, however, the skills that really matter are attention to detail, the ability to sustain focus while working through lengthy pieces of text on complex topics, tact in dealing with writers, and excellent communication skills.
Revising is also another form of editing. It is looking for awkward sentences, run-on sentences, and in general parts of the paper that don't make sense to the editor. Usually the writer revises his/her copy before turning it in.
A number of standards and tools (such as XML editors) have been elaborated for the editing of technical documents such as.
film editing.
Film editing is part of the post-production process of filmmaking. It involves the selection and combining of shots into sequences, and ultimately creating a finished motion picture. It is an art of storytelling. Film editing is the only art that is unique to cinema, separating film-making from other art forms that preceded it (such as photography, theater, dance, writing, and directing), although there are close parallels to the editing process in other art forms like poetry or novel writing. Film editing is often referred to as the "invisible art"[citation needed] because when it is well-practiced, the viewer can become so engaged that he or she is not even aware of the editor's work.On its most fundamental level, film editing is the art, technique, and practice of assembling shots into a coherent whole. A film editor is a person who practices film editing by assembling the footage. However, the job of an editor isn’t simply to mechanically put pieces of a film together, cut off film slates, or edit dialogue scenes. A film editor must creatively work with the layers of images, story, dialogue, music, pacing, as well as the actors' performances to effectively "redirect" and even rewrite the film to craft a cohesive whole. Editors usually play a dynamic role in the making of a film.
With the advent of digital editing, film editors and their assistants have become responsible for many areas of filmmaking that used to be the responsibility of others. For instance, in past years, picture editors dealt only with just that—picture. Sound, music, and (more recently) visual effects editors dealt with the practicalities of other aspects of the editing process, usually under the direction of the picture editor and director. However, digital systems have increasingly put these responsibilities on the picture editor. It is common, especially on lower budget films, for the assistant editors or even the editor to cut in music, mock up visual effects, and add sound effects or other sound replacements. These temporary elements are usually replaced with more refined final elements by the sound, music, and visual effects teams hired to complete the picture.
Film editing is an art that can be used in diverse ways. It can create sensually provocative montages; become a laboratory for experimental cinema; bring out the emotional truth in an actor's performance; create a point of view on otherwise obtuse events; guide the telling and pace of a story; create an illusion of danger where there is none; and even create a vital subconscious emotional connection to the viewer, among many other possibilities.
Video editing
Video editing is the process of editing segments of motion video footage, special effects and sound recordings. Motion picture film editing is a predecessor to video editing and, in several ways, video editing simulates motion picture film editing, in theory and the use of non-linear and linear editing systems. Using video or film, a director can communicate non-fictional and fictional events. The goals of editing is to manipulate these events for better or for worse communication. It is a visual art.
Early video recorders were so expensive, and the quality degradation caused by copying was so great, that 2 inch Quadruplex videotape was edited by visualizing the recorded track with ferrofluid and cutting with a razor blade or guillotine cutter and splicing with tape. Improvements in quality and economy, and the invention of the flying erase head, allowed new video and audio material to be recorded over the material already recorded on an existing tape. This technique was referred to as linear editing. If a scene closer to the beginning of the videotape needed to be changed in length, all later scenes would need to be recorded onto the tape again. In addition, sources could be played back simultaneously through a vision mixer to create more complex transitions between scenes.
