The Joys of Editing

I believe this will be somewhat of a motivational post for myself. I like my work, I like editing, and I think I have a good eye, though I, like everyone, have my "d'oh!" moments. And editing is a profession that can translate to any field. Granted, if I want to work in some particular fields, like medical or scientific editing, I would need to either garner small freelance experience bit by bit or take certification classes to get any kind of substantial work. But in general, everyone needs an editorial eye. It's been said countless times that language is living and always changing, and some (noneditors) will say that for this reason editing is not necessary. Those people believe that we should just let language go the path of least resistance, but the truth is that language needs to be reined in a bit, to weed out actual mistakes in usage. Otherwise, the whole point of having a developed language with thousands of words--to be able to clearly convey messages--is moot. If words are used to mean something other than their original meaning, and people begin to generally accept the new meaning, then its real meaning is confused and the word's usefulness has diminished. Not that this doesn't happen a lot already, and I am probably guilty of using words in a sense different from their original meaning, but I'm saying that editors are here to conserve the correct meaning of words, and therefore their usefulness. And I think that's important. So I edit.