06 March 2008 @ 07:42 pm
Within the FR, I've been assigned to the Daily Issue unit. Today I started editing.

Not anything serious, of course; for training I'm working on dead documents, those already published in the Federal Register previously, so I can compare what I generate to the final product. Nor is the editing in and of itself a dramatic thing; we rephrase virtually nothing, instead making sure that certain forms are followed in terms of format and punctuation and whatnot. Our main function as editors is to tag the document with markup language for the publisher (the Government Printing Office, GPO) to work with. And I don't have access to the electronic systems yet, so I can't mess around with the electronic documents (which is how most of our editing is actually done), so it was just me, an erasable red pen, and a stack of stamps. Kind of fun, actually.
Current Mood: productive
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[identity profile] dragonoflife.livejournal.com on March 8th, 2008 12:27 am (UTC)
Although the mass majority of documents arrive electronically and are so processed, there are some that still come into the office on paper only, and requiring hand-editing. I gather that they're to be eventually phased out entirely through the miracle of electronic scanning, that hasn't happened yet.

It's also true that the Register is required by law to go out every government business day; no exceptions. So I'd need to learn these skills anyway, in case someday the computers should crash, the power be disabled, or some other disaster disable the electronic editing process.
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