Proofreading, copyediting, and open source software

Krista Burdine has a long resume in technical communication. She has spent fifteen years as a storyteller, content writer, editor, and proofreader. During that time, she did freelance writing for hire. She wrote curriculum, website copy, and blog content, and even ghostwrote and published a book for a business executive, about how that executive grew her wellness organization.

Krista has been a casual user of open source software since its infancy, finally getting involved as a contributor in 2022 when she joined the Rocky Linux Documentation Team to buff her technical writing experience. Before long, she was invited to move into the Community Team, which is where she is today.

Krista now serves as Community Manager for Rocky Linux and the Rocky Enterprise Software Foundation. She loves to talk about the value non-code contributions add to even the most technical organization. We met with Krista to ask about her various roles in technical communication and her intersection with open source software.

Let's start with your background as a proofreader. What is the role of a proofreader?

A proofreader provides the last set of eyes to see a document before publication. Proofreading can include formatting of bibliographies, page layout, etc, but doesn’t always. It just depends on the scope of the assignment.

I have always considered proofreading my stupid human trick; if I had realized this was a legitimate paying job I might have stuck with my English degree in college and started doing it twenty years earlier. Alas, the options were literature or journalism, neither of which interested me at the time, so I switched to education instead. 

A proofreader has the ability to deep-dive on every keystroke of a document. About ten years ago, I fell in with a group of independent "clean fiction" authors of sweet romance (that's the kind where all the spicy romantic stuff, as well as strong language and vices, happens off the page). I offered my services in the group for free for a couple gigs, and found some recurring clients who kept me busy for five years with almost no further self-promotion required. 

Despite being that person who could always spot an error (I read thousands of books as a child and young adult), I still learned a lot along the way. I had to look up grammar rules at first to explain what I “just knew” to my clients. Now I am a lot more confident, and proud of my contribution to raising the standard of excellence in the Kindle Unlimited genre fiction catalog for more than 100 books. 

Beyond exercising my critical reading muscles, I learned other valuable skills. Scoping a job and figuring out how to charge for it took a little trial and error; now I know how many words I can carefully proofread in an hour, so I can predict how long a 50,000 word manuscript will take me and set my rate accordingly. I can dial this estimate in better with recurring clients, because I know what standard their work usually comes to me. My biggest advice to someone growing a service-based business of any type is this: definitely nurture recurring clients when you find them.

Proofreading as a job is limited exactly to fixing outright errors. I found myself beginning to critique other elements of the manuscript. If I saw opportunities for word upgrades, I suggested a few. Eventually I started to ask my clients if next time around I could be involved earlier in the process. So that’s how I added copyediting as a service.

How is copyediting different from proofreading?

Copyediting requires more fact checking, continuity checking, word suggestions, and even taking a look at word frequency and sentence variation. 

The trick is, once you start making more changes, you can’t be the proofreader anymore. The value of a proofreader is to see the whole document with fresh eyes. So I had to be able to refer my clients to other proofreaders. This drove me to learn and embrace networking better.

Copyediting led to line editing—a much more involved process in which you make every line justify its existence. I love to help clients streamline their sentences. Now I had to learn to walk the fine line between editing and rewriting. This process often involves multiple passes and works best when your client trusts your judgment. I have been fortunate to have a lot of clients who trust me.

What skills do you use all the time? Are you leveraging rhetoric to sway an audience, or writing informative copy?

I am always trying to validate and uplevel my skills. I’ve historically focused on informative copy, such as about pages and business pages. Those mostly focus on SEO practices.

Now in my role with Rocky Linux, looking at our public appearance, I see the need for more marketing language. I am sure the use of rhetoric would be helpful here, but the trending focus right now seems to be about the value of brand voice and storytelling more so than rhetoric.

What skills does someone need to have to be a good writer or communicator?

All these skills—proofreading, editing, and copywriting—require a strong command of the English language. But maybe not as much as readers are afraid they do. As long as you can recognize that something isn’t right, you can research the rule for that, and read up on it. I would just recommend that you document what you learn into a single place, so you create your own reference guide along the way.

What writing tools and tech do you use in your work?

Working with clients before I made the tech pivot, I exclusively used the Microsoft Office Suite. I liked that the doc was kept locally on my machine, so I could work in places I didn't have internet. Microsoft Word has the Track Changes feature, which  allows clients to see and approve/reject every change. My other favorite feature was Advanced Find and Replace, because when an author didn’t know the rule, they tended to apply mistakes consistently throughout the document.

Now, creating documents within the Rocky Linux accounts, I use Google Drive and GitHub. As an organization we try to prefer open source tools when possible, but we use Google Workspace for our professional accounts so all those tools are already at my disposal. Drive allows me to convert my files to Markdown text before uploading them as new documents into my GitHub repository. For what I do, which are low-code documents such as tutorials or lists of event reports, meeting notes, or other types of shared knowledge for the community to access, Google Docs is a perfectly adequate tool.

What do you love about working in technical writing?

Proofreading is needed everywhere people publish written content. One of my favorite discoveries in coming to the world of people who write code, is the shared high standard for proofreading one's work. Anyone who codes has had an experience of poring over lines of broken code just to discover the culprit was a stray semicolon.

I think my perspective, as a person with feet in both the technical world and the world of everyday non-technical people who need tech, helps me be a good evaluator of how well a piece of technical writing conveys the right points from the origin to the end user.

How did you get involved in technical writing for open source software?

In 2022, I looked through my portfolio; I had read a hundred sweet romance novels as either a proofreader or copyeditor. It was time to expand my horizons. Rocky Linux was (and still is) a fast-growing new Enterprise Linux distribution, and someone familiar with the project suggested I try my hand with the Documentation Team. It was organized enough that I could find my way into the community, so I followed the directions and started contributing. I learned that while I might lack the knowledge to write a tutorial, I still had editorial expertise useful to the project. In my first three months, I edited several existing docs, did a complete overhaul of the contributor guide, and added mini-guides for baby beginners like me.

At that point, the Rocky Enterprise Software Foundation (RESF), the host organization of Rocky Linux, started actively looking to fill a Community Team Lead position. At first, I saw that as expanding my work with the Documentation Team rather than a move, but it turned out to be a pretty all-encompassing responsibility.

In the back of my mind I still imagine coming back home to Documentation eventually. But for now, this Community Manager position has allowed me to combine technical writing with developing people and traveling all over the globe. I use that platform to advocate for technical writers to onboard into the Documentation Team. My hope is to pass on the trend of bringing something to the project and also developing writing abilities into a marketable resume-worthy skill.

Thanks to Krista for sharing her experience with us! Visit the Rocky websites to learn more about Rocky Linux or the Rocky Linux Community Team.