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

Wasserman, a former book editor of the Los Angeles Times, is publisher of Heyday Books, a nonprofit, independent publishing house founded in 1974 in Berkeley.

From Los Angeles Times ● Jul. 27, 2026

Laura joined the New York bureau of the Journal in 1981 as a reporter covering the entertainment, cable and publishing industries and was named marketing and media editor in May 1991.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Jul. 26, 2026

Kearney worked for BBC Northern Ireland for 18 years until 2019, when he joined RTÉ, where he is currently its northern editor.

From BBC ● Jul. 23, 2026

On ICYMI, host Kate Lindsay and Slate tech editor Tony Ho Tran break down the digital do’s and don’ts for couples, and argue that the thing that ruined dating might actually be making relationships better.

From Slate ● Jul. 22, 2026

He called Ben Bradlee, the paper’s executive editor, and laid out the situation.

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

The goal is to help editors identify potentially fabricated manuscripts before they are sent to outside experts for peer review.

From Science Daily ● Jul. 16, 2026

Most weeklies offered a daunting amount of space for small-town editors to fill.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Jun. 30, 2026

By implication, that means the editors of these newsletters believe that inflation will remain elevated for some time.

From MarketWatch ● Jun. 29, 2026

The film has a propulsive rhythm to it, a relentlessness, even as Wilde and editors Yorgos Mavropsaridis and Anthony Boys know when to ease off the throttle and take it easy for a bit.

From Los Angeles Times ● Jun. 25, 2026

There was the threat of fire and weather and disease: Already foreign editors were asking who would dare attend the exposition given Chicago’s notorious problems with sewage.

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