Tech editing is often completed before the pattern testing process begins. You design your pattern, you send it off to your editor, and once they’ve made all their edits, it’s ready to be sent off to testers, before finally being published.

But just because the tech editing process is over doesn’t mean you should stop communication with your tech editor!

I believe that photographs can be the most valuable asset in your marketing strategy for your knitting patterns. I know lots of designers say they wish they could spend time designing and less time having to market their designs, and having stunning photographs that draw people in is one way to cut down on that time.

Think about it: Pictures allow a knitter to see what the item they’re knitting will look like when completed. When someone is browsing through the seemingly infinite patterns available on Ravelry, the only thing that what will make them stop and click on your pattern is the photograph. As knitters, that’s all we see at first.

When I first started editing, I took the path of feeling like everything had to be written a certain way, that everything needed to fit with some industry standard.

Over time I’ve come to change my approach to be more relaxed and whenever I think back to my first few edits I cringe.

Nowadays I fully believe that preserving the designer’s voice is one of my most important jobs when tech editing. It’s pretty common for big companies to spend lots of money preserving their brand identity. If you’ve ever worked in a role where writing is involved you likely had a style guide and brand guidelines that you had to adhere to. Tone, style, word choices, etc. come together to form a company’s brand voice, which can be a really important element in a company’s communications strategy. You also have a brand voice in your knitting patterns. Your romance text, the way you word instructions, your way of styling instructions, the flow of the instructions – these are all part of your designer voice.

When you think of tech editors, do you think of someone sitting at their computer, staring at an Excel spreadsheet for hours? You’d probably be right, but that’s not the only thing we do! Of course we check that the numbers in a pattern is correct, but another important part of tech editing is improving pattern clarity.

So what is pattern clarity? One way to think about it is how easy it is to understand your pattern. Can a knitter give your pattern a read and automatically understand exactly what you’re telling them to do? Then that’s a clear pattern, and you’re good to go. The opposite of this would be a pattern that is constantly tripping your knitter up, making them scratch their heads, or sending them searching for your contact information so they can ask you what the heck you meant.