How to Use This Guide



This guide is for both editors and assistant editors. Part I details the roles and responsibilities of the team editor while Part II briefly explains those of the assistant editor. Both editors and assistant editors must thoroughly read this guide to understand their respective roles and how they relate to each other.

Part I: Your Role as Team Editor

Working in a group

As an e-tern editor, you will lead a team consisting of two writers, one assistant editor, and one writing coach. Your primary tasks will include the following:

To recap, writers research their HelpGram topics. Then they write HelpGrams and input all the links (recommended links, recommended books, and nonprofit organization) into the HelpGrams. All the HelpGrams that writers submit will automatically appear in your e-tern folder.

Writing coaches provide feedback to writers. Writers must submit their first three HelpGrams to writing coaches, via an MS Word attachment that's sent through e-mail. After writing coaches give writers feedback on their first five HelpGrams, writing coaches must write 30 HelpGrams and answer any questions or concerns that writers have regarding their writing or research. For a detailed description of a writing coach's duties, click here.

Serving as a team leader

While you'll independently edit HelpGrams produced by your team, you will also correspond with writers occasionally. At the beginning of your e-ternship, you should introduce yourself to your team members via e-mail.

Here's a sample introductory letter addressed to writers:


Hi team members,

I'm thrilled to be working with you all. Please feel free to forward your questions and concerns to me during the course of your e-ternship. I will either answer your questions directly, assign a writing coach to work with you on your writing concerns, or forward your question to an appropriate staff member. Happy E-terning.

Sincerely,
E-tern Editor, HelpGram, Inc.

After you introduce yourself to your team, you'll be charged with editing their work. Your first couple of weeks aboard may be slow since all writers must submit their first five HelpGrams to their team's writing coach for feedback. So use this downtime to carefully review all the training materials and the additional resources included in the training materials.

Also, for training purposes, you must write three HelpGrams to familiarize yourself with the HelpGram writing process. You'll find the topics that you must complete in your e-tern folder.

After you've completed your training and have written a few HelpGrams, you'll be ready to be your team's chief editor and leader.

As a team leader, your duties include the following:

  1. Answering questions about topics: As you know, we assign topics to writers, providing them a tentative title and a one to two sentence description of each topic. The descriptions are only broad guidelines for approaching the topics. We give writers and editors the freedom to interpret and execute the topics and descriptions as they see fit, as long as they are written according to our editorial guidelines. If the writers find the topic or the explanation of the topic unclear or have concerns about whether what they have written satisfies the assigned description of the topic, you have the authority to clarify these questions and concerns. Answering questions about assigned topics will primarily entail supplying the writer with ideas concerning what to write about or how to write about a topic.

  2. Assigning rewrites: If you receive a HelpGram that is unfinished (missing expert statement, data points, and/or links) or if you receive a HelpGram that needs to be rewritten (due to the poor quality of the writing or due to an incorrect or inappropriate editorial style), you have the authority to do the following:


  3. Assuring that writers send their first five HelpGrams to writing coaches: Writing coaches should "CC" a copy of their first five HelpGrams to you, to the assistant editor, to the writing coach, and to the E-ternship Director. Similarly, the writing coach should "CC" any writer feedback to you, to the assistant editor and to the E-ternship Director. This process ensures that writers and writing coaches are following correct training procedures. You don't have to review these drafts nor do you have to worry about any disputes between writers and writing coaches. The E-ternship Director reviews all correspondence between writing coaches and writers and will intervene in any disputes that arise between writing coaches and writers. Also, remember that you will serve as an editor and a team leader only. Therefore, only your team's writing coach will supply feedback to writers. So think of writing coaches not only as writers, but also as tutors who assist other writers.

  4. Identifying & reporting plagiarism: As you'll learn in the next section, we require editors to look over the recommended links to evaluate their quality. If you notice any extreme similarities between the content of the HelpGram and the information in the recommended links, inform your E-ternship Director of potential plagiarism. The E-ternship Director will settle this matter with the suspected e-tern.

  5. Directing questions and concerns to appropriate staff: With the exception of editing, you're primarily responsible for the above four tasks. Any time writers desire feedback on their writing, forward their requests to your team's writing coach. In addition, if an e-tern writer asks you any questions that you cannot answer, forward such questions to your E-ternship Director. Also, if you're too busy to handle certain questions from your team's writers, ask your assistant editor to handle those questions. ALWAYS "CC" your correspondence with writers to your group's assistant editor. Doing so will help assistant editors get to know the writers, will clarify lines of authority for writers, and will teach the assistant editor how to correctly handle questions and concerns from writers.

Part II: The Role of an Assistant Editor

As an assistant editor, you will primarily edit HelpGrams left over from previous sessions and those produced by your group's writers and writing coaches.

Additional responsibilities include the following:

When editing HelpGrams, you may do the following:

The HelpGrams from previous sessions will require substantial revisions, as they were written prior to creation of the new editorial guidelines detailed in each training guide. Thoroughly read the next page to learn how to edit HelpGrams.

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