Looking for a job or staying on the crossroads while choosing a career way one should pay enough attention to what he or she wants to deal with and does he or she have qualities to complete given tasks perfectly or almost perfectly.
What concerns editors job, I believe that one to do such a job perfectly is a person that is accurate. That means that he or she should have enough knowledge about the sphere she or he works in and is very good at language.
Editors’ job may be compared with brilliant polishing where no mistakes are allowed and the smallest typing error may cause huge problems. Misprint of “grew” for “brew” in one sentence may change all the meaning and just the same while talking about numbers.
That is why one should come again and again and re-read the text for several times to make sure that all the sentences have sense and are in the correct order.
I believe that editor must be impartial. While working with a text she or he must not change main point of author’s view, but make the text grammatically correct. He or she must not change what are the main style features of the author but if possible to avoid repetitions. He or she may not add or omit information, but preserve the same intention the author wanted without losing important information.
Like a translator, editor must remain unnoticeable and what he does must look as it was done by author him or herself. He or she may not change what was said by the author, but remember the ethics and to take away what is slip of the pen.
There are several other qualities a good editor must possess as patience, self-motivation, excellent language and writing skills. But the main demand is not to have such qualities, but to know how to imply them. Just finding the golden middle and combination of all of the above named qualities, the editor will complete his or her job …