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Biological Sciences and Medicine
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Armed with an undergraduate degree and graduate coursework
in biosciences, this editor has worked as a freelance
medical editor for more than 13 years. Besides being a
longtime member of the American Medical Writers Association
(AMWA) and the Board of Editors in the Life Sciences (BELS),
she has completed many advanced courses in
proofreading and editing.
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You belong to an academic society that has many editors
as members, don't you?
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Yes, I belong to an Editors' Association, and I took part in
their conference last week in Austin, Texas. Several medical
editors and writers attended; we discussed useful editing
tools and macros and exchanged opinions about the use of
research databases. The Editors' Association also organizes
workshops on techniques of editing figures. At such events,
I acquaint myself with recent advances in medicine. This
particular conference was an excellent opportunity to
refresh my editing knowledge and style.
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Why did you choose to become an editor rather than a
researcher?
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Although I had planned to pursue a career in research, I
found that I was more interested in gaining medical
knowledge than in actually doing the research myself. I
enjoy learning about the discoveries and findings of other
researchers. I chose editing as a job because it enables me
to learn something new every day. I have two children - 8
and 5 years old. So I think that this job is ideal while I'm
raising them, because freelance editors can organize their
time in a more flexible manner. To consistently deliver work
of high quality is not that easy, especially for
freelancers; but it works for me because I have a solid
client base.
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What kind of clients do you cater to?
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I usually get orders from universities in Taiwan and Korea.
Almost all my clients are non-native English speakers. I
have clients in non-English speaking countries such as
Finland, Spain, and in many other European nations.
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In your experience, what mistakes do non-native English
speakers usually make?
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The most common error is repeating things from tables or
figures in the results section, thus producing a document
that is longer than it needs to be. From a grammatical point
of view, mistakes usually occur in word order. I frequently
change the construction of several sentences and the order
of words therein. Appropriate word choice is also an
important factor in editing. For example, I've had to change
"while" to "where" and "since" to "because" on many
occasions.
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This interview will be read by many Japanese researchers
whose native language is not English. Please give them
some ideas about writing better theses.
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I would suggest that they read the abstract repeatedly and
verify the results that are presented there. Sometimes, it
happens that researchers reanalyze some data but fail to
change those results in the abstract. They need to make sure
that the results in the abstract are correct and that they
match what is depicted in the tables and figures. I
recommend a really good book titled Essentials of Writing
Biomedical Research Papers by Mimi Zeiger.
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You've been editing for close to 20 years now. How do you
value your experience as an editor?
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As far as language is concerned, what editing has given me
is this: the longer I edit the more things I have to look
up. That doesn't mean that I understand every consequence of
the results obtained by the researchers, but I think that I
need to be well-versed with the content and subject matter
in order to be a good editor. I think that all editors need
to have subject experience, particularly in their chosen
field of study. I hope to become a subject-specific editor.
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What exactly do you mean by that?
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Editors must strive to create a niche in a "specific" area,
of their choice and expertise. They must aspire to become
thus oriented. I wish to create something special for
authors. That is my hope.
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Note that the views expressed on this page are of the person
interviewed and do not necessarily reflect the views of Enago as
a company. Please contact
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you have any questions regarding the content of this interview.
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