editor

American  

[ed-i-ter] / ˈɛd ɪ tər /

noun

• editors
  plural

1. a person having managerial and sometimes policy-making responsibility related to the writing, compilation, and revision of content for a publishing firm or for a newspaper, magazine, or other publication.

   She was offered a managing editor position at a small press.

2. the supervisor or manager of a department of a newspaper, magazine, etc..

   the sports editor of a newspaper.

3. a person who edits, or selects and revises, material for publications, films, etc..

   a video editor;

   the editor of an online journal.

4. a device for viewing, cutting, and editing film or magnetic tape to make movies, audio recordings, etc.

5. Computers. a program used for writing and revising code, data, or text.

   an XML editor.

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editor British  

/ ˈɛdɪtə /

noun

1. a person who edits written material for publication

2. a person in overall charge of the editing and often the policy of a newspaper or periodical

3. a person in charge of one section of a newspaper or periodical

   the sports editor

4. films

   1. a person who makes a selection and arrangement of individual shots in order to construct the flowing sequence of images for a film

   2. a device for editing film, including a viewer and a splicer

5. television radio a person in overall control of a programme that consists of various items, such as a news or magazine style programme

6. a computer program that facilitates the deletion or insertion of data within information already stored in a computer

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Other Word Forms

Derived Forms

• editorship
  noun

Inflected Forms

Nouns

• editors
  plural

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Etymology

Origin of editor

1640–50; < Medieval Latin, Late Latin: publisher; see edit, -tor

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Explanation

Newspaper editors don't write the stories, but they come up with the story ideas, assign them to writers, read all of the drafts, and correct and change them to make them ready to be published. You can be an editor without working at a newspaper. Magazines and books are all worked on by editors. There are photo editors and film editors, who splice together the footage and determine a movie's pacing. Even if you just correct your friend's spelling mistakes, you're editing her work.

Example Sentences

See Examples For:

editor editors

His father worked as a soap opera editor and would sometimes bring him to set, where he learned to love the “feeling of being around people making stuff.”

From Los Angeles Times ● Nov. 5, 2026

Meka Boyle is a writer and editor based between New York and Los Angeles.

From Los Angeles Times ● Nov. 3, 2026

John graduated in 2026 from the USC Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism, where he served as managing editor of Annenberg Media and a producer for Annenberg Radio News.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Oct. 31, 2026

One of the founders of Novaya Gazeta in the 1990s - and for many years its chief editor - was journalist Dmitry Muratov, external.

From BBC ● Oct. 30, 2026

Liyana had already started drafting a letter to the editor for the daily English/Arabic newspaper in Jerusalem, pronouncing such behavior primitive and unacceptable.

From "Habibi" by Naomi Shihab Nye

That makes me think: Are these reporters and editors not understanding the moment that we’re in?

From Salon ● Nov. 2, 2026

Why do editors publish results they don’t believe?

From The Wall Street Journal ● Oct. 30, 2026

In a statement, the companies behind the project said the AI-assisted technology will "scan decades of episodes to map character arcs, storylines and standout moments, helping editors quickly identify the strongest material".

From BBC ● Oct. 29, 2026

"We demand the resignations of the RTS director general, his deputy, the editors-in-chief responsible for news coverage and all news editors," the students said in a letter on Tuesday.

From Barron's ● Oct. 27, 2026

The next day, he joined about ten editors and executives in James Reston’s office.

From "Most Dangerous: Daniel Ellsberg and the Secret History of the Vietnam War" by Steve Sheinkin

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