What do you call the person who reviews/approves outlines?

[Geoff Hart]

Susan Tamaoki wondered: <<I saw a post recently about a tech pubs 
department that had a position for someone who creates and/or approves 
outlines for the department. I tried looking for the post today, but 
couldn't find it. I'd like to email the person who sent it and ask how 
it's working. The tech pubs group I'm in may try something similar and 
I'm on the short list for that job. So, what's this position called? 
How is it working?>>

Back where I used to work, we called that position "editor". <g> After 
all, _good_ editors do a bit more than just checking the spelling. As  
freelancer, I now offer this service to my clients because some of them 
come from cultures with very different rhetorical strategies than the 
journals they're writing for will accept. So without considerable help, 
they produce long, rambling, disordered, and unfocused manuscripts that 
get bounced hard by the journals.

I have an article on effective outlining scheduled to appear in STC's 
_Intercom_ magazine some time in the next few months, after which it'll 
be up on my Web site too, but if I were to provide an "outline" of the 
article <g>, it would look like this:

- Architects and carpenters slave over their plans and blueprints 
before they get to work because they know it works and know that they 
can't afford to redo the work twice.

- Writers should do this too, but because writing is easier to fix, 
often figure they can get away without this planning.

- Those writers who do create outlines rarely create effective 
outlines, because they simply say "I'll describe this feature" instead 
of actually writing a summary description.

- The solution: sweat the details (plan thrice, write once), and 
provide details instead of vaguely waving your hands and saying "this 
part of the document is called the Introduction".

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Geoff Hart   ghart at videotron.ca
(try geoffhart at mac.com if you don't get a reply)
www.geoff-hart.com
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