The Levels of Edit

I first encountered the concept of levels of edit early in my technical  writing career when I came across a copy of the JPL Style Manual. The section on levels of edit has been republished as a PDF file). I found it quite helpful in organizing my work and explaining what I was doing to managers and SMEs.

Since then, there have been externsions of the original concept. The best explanation I've seen so far is the article The Levels of Edit, by Odile Sullivan-Tarazi.

Conceptions of how many “levels” of edit there are, and just what each comprises, differ across editing environments.

In general, the levels move from broader to successively finer concerns —

On up to the finer-grained, more superficial issues (hyphenation, spelling, surface-level grammar) often related to the look on the page . . .

To characteristics of the writing itself (tone, style, clarity, cohesion, coherence, parallelism, etc.) . . .

To issues of structure and organization (both inherent logic and as applicable to context and audience) . . .

The larger, foundational issues of the piece (concept, tone, purpose, audience, conceived content) . . .

She goes on to explain each level in detail as well as describing how the levels relate to each other. It's a useful article for anyone pursuing an editing career or for technical writers faced with editing as part of their workflow.