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I edit exclusively online and have for about the last three years. I
currently edit in Acro 7 Pro.
I've heard people claim that you can't edit as well online, which is not
true. It's *different,* to be sure, but it's a matter of training and/or
familiarity with working in that medium. I know that I personally find
more reviewing online than I used to on paper. It's also much faster for
me -- for example, if I find a problem in a particular phrasing of
something, and I know it's repeated elsewhere in the doc, I can
electronically search and copy/paste the same comment into those
locations.
When I'm editing content, I will set the page zoom to "fit width", and
see only a small portion of the page. That allows me to focus on a
smaller portion of text at a time, and of course the text is much larger
and easier to read, which reduces eye strain. (One person mentioned how
difficult it can be to select a single comma, etc., when editing online
-- I don't have problem because of the zoom factor.)
Editing in Acro 7 gives the writers other options as well. If I took the
time to rewrite a sentence or paragraph, they can copy my rewrite
directly out of the online edit. They can also track which edits they've
made using the checkmark feature, and make comments regarding certain
edits if they have a reason *not* to make the change, or made a change
different from what I suggested.
Our documents are designed for print, and one of the passes I make on
these types of docs is to view the pages side by side on the monitor,
and proof what the "printed" version would look like as well. I often
catch pagination errors or formatting errors that way.
And finally, editing online means we don't have to store paper copies of
the edits to maintain a record of what was changed.
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