From Schoolroom to Workroom

I have been interning as a freelance editor for the City of Cherokee. During that time I worked on one major project, which was to digitize the City Code book and edit for typos. I also added in amendments, applied styles to all of the text, and then reformatted it into an additional pocket sized book.

For this project I needed knowledge of editing, Microsoft Word, and a basic working knowledge of legalese. This was my first opportunity to apply styles to an entire document to make it easier for an aging population, and editing a document written in legalese. I had dealt with legal documents in previous jobs, but I never actually edited them before. I was limited in the wording I could change due to the legality, but getting to work with it was new.

            Working from home I was able to set my own time frame and goals. I was basically digitizing and applying styles to the entire document, so there wasn’t a lot of writing. I worked under the city clerk and he reported to the council and mayor the changes that I made. The clerk was friendly and open to the changes I made stylistically when I went to talk to him. There was some tension in the office when an employee was terminated, reminding me it was nice to not be in an office environment.

If I hadn’t already completed the code book I would have passed on the style sheet to my successor. I would make sure they knew that language needed to remain the same, and I would let them know about the town itself by way of explaining some of the stylistic choices that were made.