How can you improve your editing skills without changing the writer's voice?

What the prompt says, absolutely, but an added editor #protip when dealing with new writers is scroll, quickly. Memory: In my first year or so of journalism, I was so very lucky to have editors who would explain how the story was fine, but I was burying the intro. If I just kinda reversed the order of sentences, all good, give it a go. Yeah, like that, they'd nod later. Wow, I thought, okay. So for deadline editors dealing with new writers - and there is a lot of us, even old hands learning new things - scroll, baby, scroll !

Communication? As a young writer, loathed having to sit with any editor and edit a story, word-by-word, sentence-by-sentence. Mainly because, by the end of a few hours as a cub reporter, I could barely remember my own name, let alone the intricacies of the story I just wrote. Fear. Fear and loathing. Writing news is scary ! As an older writer, I still feel exactly the same, that never goes away, lol. Get better at feeling it, sure, but never conquer it, fully. What does happen though, is that fairly soon as a writer you end up editing even newer writers, and from that? You're an editor, too. Tell them? What you've learnt, if they're listening. Tell them what your editors told you. And what you wish they told you. Be gentle.

I always try to take the perspective that if it’s a different style but not factually wrong or off tone, leave it. Don’t make changes for the sake of making changes.

What @Lisa D'Innocenzo says here, totally support. Edit light, keep it right, to what the writer wrote. As an editor, remember, for every story? Different journo voices are important, but even more important is source voices they report. Edit light, edit for clarity, lest we risk misinterpretation. Editor add-on paragraphs for factuality and tone can always anchor all those different voices, but should not replace them.

As a reporter, journalist? Accept that? You're already an editor. Spotting typos in our own news stories, wincing, or seeing yet another website with silly flaws, sighing, or convoluted jargon in official documents - eye rolling - you're already 'editing', for plain language; intent. Keep spotting, keep wincing, sighing, and eye rolling, because that's all good practice.