editor

American  

[ed-i-ter] / ˈɛd ɪ tər /

noun

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

• editorship
  noun

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

Including a 9.9 million-barrel drawdown in the nation’s Strategic Petroleum Reserve, total U.S. oil supply just fell by the most in a single week on record, according to Tyler Richey, editor at Sevens Report Technicals.

From MarketWatch • May 20, 2026

Tony Bellows, editor of parish magazine La Baguette, said he felt social housing could be improved.

From BBC • May 19, 2026

On this week’s Slate Plus bonus episode of Amicus, co-host Mark Joseph Stern discussed Thursday’s decision with Madiba Dennie, deputy editor of Balls and Strikes and author of The Originalism Trap.

From Slate • May 15, 2026

Ms. Koch is an associate editor of Free Expression.

From The Wall Street Journal • May 14, 2026

He left St. Louis for a job editing a rural Michigan newspaper but found that the realities of being a small-town editor did not live up to the fantasy.

From "The Devil in the White City" by Erik Larson