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

Smith, who is now a senior editor at Simon & Schuster and lives in Germany, recalled those early days for me over Zoom.

From Los Angeles Times ● Aug. 19, 2026

I was worried that my editor, a cool guy who’s known me for years, might be on edge about this sort of thing.

From Slate ● Aug. 18, 2026

Mr. Heitman, a columnist for the Baton Rouge Advocate, is the editor of Phi Kappa Phi’s Forum magazine.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Aug. 16, 2026

"This isn't just a brand campaign for a new sparkling canned drink. It's the people who are supposed to be running the country," wrote The Times's social media editor, Esme Hewitt.

From Barron's ● Aug. 16, 2026

As an initial step, they were pleased to find an ally in a black small-time newspaper editor and entrepreneur, Richard E. Parker.

From "A Few Red Drops: The Chicago Race Riot of 1919" by Claire Hartfield

Ms. Hazrat points out that the punctuation of William Shakespeare’s plays seem not to have come from the Bard himself but from the editors, copyreaders, typesetters and publishers who shepherded his manuscripts into finished form.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Aug. 14, 2026

But multicam editors stay on set during filming.

From Los Angeles Times ● Aug. 10, 2026

Tanya Simon, the executive producer who oversaw the program’s recent success, was removed alongside correspondents Alfonsi and Vega, as well as senior editors and producers.

From Salon ● Aug. 8, 2026

Tangney said the company’s performance reflected the benefits of a “model within a model” that focused on drug interactions as well as the work of over 12,000 physician editors who review the AI output.

From MarketWatch ● Aug. 7, 2026

As the paper’s in-house lawyer, it would be his job to advise the editors about the possible legal fallout from publishing classified documents.

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