Editors vary. A good editor can take something rough and polish it, retaining the voice of the author. A bad editor can suck all the life out of the writing, ne

Editors vary. A good editor can take something rough and polish it, retaining the voice of the author. A bad editor can suck all the life out of the writing, never having noticed the author’s voice in the first place. It seems to me there has been a decline in the quality of editing by major publishers in recent years – though it may be that I have become better at noticing prose that would benefit from editing. Self-published stuff is normally worse, but it’s no surprise: hiring an editor would turn many self-published books from a modest profit to a heavy loss. The thing is that writing can be bad in a multitude of ways, and a good editor can fix at least one of those — and, at the very least, help ensure that the ideas on paper are written according to the norms and conventions of the language.