Editing is, therefore, the production of copies of an artistic or scientific work or a visual document. The edition of the verb indicates the action of publishing a piece through its representation in a physical or digital medium.
The concept of publishing, therefore, has several uses linked to its main meaning. The edition can be the printing, recording or reproduction of a disc or an audiovisual work: "Next week the edition will be ready and the disc will hit the streets", "The press informed me that there were some problems with the edition.".
Successive runs of a newspaper and their local or regional versions are also known as editions: "The Autonomous Press newspaper published an interview with the Chancellor in its evening edition", "The Latin American edition of the newspaper has a lower quality than the European one"
In this field of book, magazine or newspaper printing, it should be noted that there has been a significant advance in the field of publishing. And the appearance of new technologies has allowed this process to be different:
- Faster, because the systems currently used allow to obtain a greater number of copies in less time.
- Higher quality, thanks to improved systems.
- Less need for personnel, as the machines used now perform functions that the employees previously performed.
- With greater format possibilities and a remarkable variety of colors and assemblies.
We can call editor, therefore, the person who is dedicated to publishing a newspaper, a magazine, a book, etc., through a printing or other procedure with the intention of multiplying the copies. For example: "I have already delivered the manuscript to my editor", "The Cordovan writer has a long confrontation with his previous editor", "My father has written two novels but he cannot find an editor who wants to promote his work".
In the field of computing, an editor is a program (software) that allows you to correct, create, store, etc. some kind of file. The image editor is the program that allows us to modify drawings, photographs, and similar content: "The photograph we took at the door of the museum came out very dark: we will have to fix it with the editor", "I don't like that they modify the body of the models with an editor “.
There are some phrases of daily use that contain the word that concerns us: critical edition (it is that edition that presents the different variants of those sources that were consulted for the edition of the work), pirate edition (it is an edition that does not have authorization of its author) and princeps edition (it is the first edition of a work, in case you have had more than one).
