Behind the scenes of the text editing

Hi! My name‘s Nataly and I’m working as ENCOUNTER’s text editor this year. What does it mean and how does it work?

The editor’s job is to check the texts: I got to look for the spelling, semantic and stylistic mistakes. I simply work as some kind of  “grammatical emergency” throughout the day as well as the whole festival week. Sounds boring, doesn’t it? But I find it interesting and a good kind of activity for the morning and afternoon. A well-edited text is a feast for the eyes and I hope that I‘m not the only one who finds it pleasant. 

It looks somehow like this: 

I wake up, check the phone. Some new messages containing the material I should edit start to pop up. Another review. Five more reviews. I am ready. 

Thanks to the text, I am able to get from my computer to the auditorium for a moment. Captivating sentences, metaphors, poetics…and suddenly a MISTAKE appears somewhere…using italics, commas, wrong suffixes…

Alright, I‘m back in the auditory..but not for long. Grammatical rules, spaces, hyphens..

Corrected and edited. I have to read the text one more time. Okay, it looks fine now and I feel like watching the performance finally!

Over and over…

Natálie Mlejnková (JAMU)