Corpus Linguistics and Technical Editing: How Corpora Can Help Copy Editors Adopt a Rhetorical View of Prescriptive Usage Rules

Scholars have long argued that technical editing should be viewed as a rhetorical practice in which copy editors take “a situational approach to each individual task” (Buehler, 1980/2003, p. 458). Yet many editing pedagogies still treat some language-level editing tasks, like those that involve prescriptive usage rules, as mechanical rather than rhetorical. This article discusses how empirical data from corpora can help copy editors adopt a more rhetorical view of prescriptive usage rules and introduces corpus linguistics as a methodology that can contribute to technical editing pedagogy.