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

Etymology

Origin of editor

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

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

The outcome comes as no surprise, according to the BBC's Russia editor, Steve Rosenberg, who has been following the elections from Moscow.

From BBC ● Sep. 21, 2026

‘If we insisted that every politician write his own piece, we’d either get terrible pieces or none at all,’ said an op-ed editor at the New York Times.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Sep. 18, 2026

I was alternately excited and apprehensive to take part, and my editor would like me to note that I pitched this story on my own accord.

From Los Angeles Times ● Sep. 18, 2026

For the Amicus bonus episode, Dahlia unpacks the election mayhem happening in Missouri with Madiba K. Dennie, deputy editor and senior contributor at Balls and Strikes.

From Slate ● Sep. 17, 2026

A Los Angeles Times editor recalled Darrow once telling him, “When you’re up against a bunch of crooks you will have to play their game. Why shouldn’t I?”

From "Killers of the Flower Moon" by David Grann

Thanks for several chuckles — especially your response to the reader who questioned the existence of editors at the Times: “Thats a grate queston.”

From Los Angeles Times ● Sep. 19, 2026

The new incentive is aimed at bringing back jobs for the industry’s editors, sound mixers, composers and visual effects artists.

From Los Angeles Times ● Sep. 19, 2026

Twenty-five years later, reporters and editors look back at how they covered one of the biggest news events in the country’s recent history.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Sep. 11, 2026

Many notable editors and founding publishers of the past century have been Jewish.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Sep. 10, 2026

We began assembling groups of reporters and editors from different sections of the paper for brainstorming sessions that were long, intense, and inconclusive.

From "Class Matters" by The New York Times