Link: What do Editors Do?

I was planning on writing a post about how editors work, but this one over at About Freelance Writing is probably better than anything I could've come up with.

An editor is an advocate for the reader and for the writer. Her job is to make sure they understand each other.

That means that we have to ask dumb questions sometimes, which doesn’t
mean we’re making fun of writers’ works. Or, we can try to fix things
we don’t understand, and if we mess up, that’s a good message that the
reader wouldn’t “get it” either.

Go read it.