Where the Magic Happens
By: Bonnie Bryan Denham
As a Technical Editor that’s spent 4 years in the aerospace industry and 11 years in the oil and gas industry, a popular phrase I’ve gotten used to hearing is, “Work your magic.” This “magic” (mostly white magic, but sometimes involving a little black magic when MS Word is misbehaving) can encompass a lot. I should probably say, it encompasses everything.
Checking documents for spelling and grammar errors is just the beginning of what this phrase means to the teams I’ve supported over the years. To me, this magic also includes stellar customer service and a never-ending, enthusiastic willingness to help.
While writing this article I was asked to think of the most seemingly mysterious issues I’ve been asked by clients to remedy – things that don’t just involve formatting fixes. Three issues that come to mind are:
- Reducing the size of a file that started out small but has suddenly grown, to make it email-able again
- Removing stuck watermarks
- Consolidating multiple files of revisions into a master file (when reviewers didn’t use SharePoint or MS Word’s Track Changes feature)
