Why Your Organization Needs Editorial Practices

If your organization creates content for audiences to use, then you need processes for creating, editing, and publishing that content. Taken together, those processes are editorial practices. People who work as journalists or as publishers of newspapers or magazines follow explicit editorial practices constantly. Editorial practices are part of the culture shared within those industries because inaccuracy and poor attention to detail are bad for business.

Organizations in other industries also benefit from strong editorial practices. Law firms benefit when their briefs are accurate and persuasive; they suffer when briefs generated by AI refer to cases that don’t exist. Nonprofits can use effective social media posts to engage potential volunteers and potential donors. Marketers can use consistent messaging, tone, and visuals to develop strong brands that consumers know and trust. Government offices and related programs save money and effort when their content is crafted to meet the needs of their audiences.

In the 1990s, Dr. Joann Hackos developed the Information Process Maturity Model (IPMM) to understand and improve the work of technical writers and training developers. It lists five levels of maturity. Organizations review their practices in several key areas to understand their places on the IPMM spectrum. The lowest level of maturity is ad-hoc. For organizations at the ad hoc level, creating content is akin to putting out a metaphorical fire: the work gets done, but each project is treated like one of a kind.

The next level of maturity is rudimentary, followed by organized and repeatable, then by managed and sustainable. The highest level of maturity is optimizing. As organizations improve their editorial practices in the areas Hackos identified, they increase their levels of maturity. In 2015, the consultancy Content Strategy, Inc. adapted the IPMM to create a Content Maturity Model relevant for website development, content governance, and marketing applications. Their model uses the same levels of maturity as the IPMM.

Organizations with mature processes for creating content have strong editorial processes. Strong editorial processes benefit organizations in several ways:

They support the organization’s brand.
They increase shared understanding of key concepts and messages within and outside the organization.
They help ensure writing projects get appropriate time and resources.
They reduce costly mistakes.

It is important to note that strong editorial practices are not meant only for people whose primary jobs are to create or edit content. When subject matter experts or members of management review content that someone else has created, they are following editorial practices. When social media staffers check to ensure their drafted posts have appropriate tone, hashtags, and visuals, they are following editorial practices. When an associate at a law firm uses a checklist to review a drafted legal brief before returning it to the author, they are following editorial practices.

Guides for writing, editing, and publishing are available for many fields. While I cannot provide a comprehensive list of editorial practices, below I will list some that I consider most important.

Get executive support for your editorial practices. Help your management to understand why editorial practices are important, and why material support for these practices (through budgets and personnel lines) is essential. Additionally, management can help enforce editorial practices if staff do not follow them.
Define your organization’s communication style guidelines. An editorial style sheet lists choices for a specific project in your organization. An editorial style guide applies broadly and covers various communication scenarios. Identify the facets of communication that help your organization communicate distinctively. Some topics to cover include logo usage, typography, and colors for print and online use; trademarked terms and important technical vocabulary; guidelines for tone; specific guidelines for spelling, capitalization, and punctuation; and formatting specifications.
Share your style guidelines with content creators, and ensure that staff know when they must follow them. It is not enough to have a style guide on a shelf behind a desk; make your guidelines easy to access for everyone in the organization.
Create templates that follow the style guide. Templates build in editorial choices about typefaces, margins, bulleted lists, captions, and many other aspects of style. Templates allows your staff to focus on creating and editing content instead of worrying so much about formatting.
Use tools that work with your authoring environment to enact your editorial practices. No matter what kind of software your organization uses to create content, there are tools to help you do your work better. A corporate dictionary can ensure consistent spellings and meanings. Macros, scripts, and other custom tools can help with tasks like formatting content or checking quality. A plain-language tool such as WordRake can help you identify passages that may be improved through specific revisions.
Note: The number of online tools for reviewing (and creating) content has expanded dramatically. Ensure that your organization approves any tool that you use. Many online tools keep copies of the content you submit, so be careful not to submit confidential material.
Follow clear editorial processes and establish clear deadlines. Many content management systems can send content from creators to editors and reviewers by routing documents according to organizational processes and assignments. Whether your organization has a complex system in place or you simply send emails with copies of drafted documents, it is important to follow approved procedures and to ensure that staff know what is due, and when.
Create clear expectations for each person who contributes to your organization’s content. Define roles explicitly. The roles of writers, editors, and reviewers overlap considerably; define expectations clearly to reduce frustration. (In small teams, staff may need to fulfil different roles from one project to another.)
Make editorial awareness part of your organizational culture. Help everyone in your organization to know something about your editorial practices. Make brief presentations at organizational meetings; offer lunchtime talks or training webinars about editorial practices. Offer fun activities on National Grammar Day (March 4) or International Plain Language Day (October 13). No matter how big your organization is or what the culture is like, you can find ways to shed light on your practices. Your colleagues will take notice when they understand how your editorial practices support the organizational brand.

Good editorial practices will improve the quality of your organization’s content and strengthen your brand. Small steps can lead to big improvements over time.

About the Author

Russell Willerton is a technical writer and a professor of technical communication. He is currently chair of the English department at Sam Houston State University. His book is Plain Language and Ethical Action: A Dialogic Approach to Technical Content in the Twenty-First Century (Routledge, 2015).

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