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Recently I was asked whether I ever find editing work tedious. Although it's not exciting to go through a document and just insert and remove commas as appropriate, which sometimes is all a document needs, it still engages my critical and analytical skills to ensure the text is correct, and it's satisfying to know when I'm done that the document is now correct. It can be a little tedious having to make the same corrections repeatedly, but not so much that I ever feel sick of editing as a profession. What I do find tiresome, though, is finding in a later draft that someone has rejected my corrections and reinstated the incorrect text. It's very vexing.
Here's an example from the document I'm currently working on. In the previous draft, I standardized a set of subheadings to use parallel structure, meaning that each one used the same format, in this case an imperative statement: "do this." "Understand the impact," "provide [stuff]," "deliver through [this approach]." (Note that I'm paraphrasing these to maintain some pretense of confidentiality, because it's a draft.) One of these headings said, "Current resources are probably not best suited to deliver [stuff]," which clearly does not fit the pattern; it's a declarative statement, it simply says, "this is the case," rather than saying, "(you, the reader, should) do this." So I reworded the heading to say, "Use a dedicated resource, not your current one"—which arguably may not be the best rewording, but it does follow the pattern and could easily be adjusted while staying parallel with the other headings. I also included a comment explaining why I was making this change. Thus, it's exasperating to get back the current draft and find that someone accepted all of the other heading changes I made, so that they're using a parallel imperative structure ("do this"), but restored this particular heading to its cumbersome original version, which is clearly inconsistent with the rest. Now I have to make the change again, and explain it again, and it's likely that it will still end up in this inconsistent state in the final version.
Here's another, much shorter, example, of a typical problem I'm constantly facing: the tendency of writers to unnecessarily capitalize certain terms, job titles in particular. In the previous draft, I corrected "Distributors and Large Account Resellers" to "distributors and large account resellers." Those terms do not need to be capitalized any more than one would capitalize "doctors" or "garbage collectors" or "insurance salesmen." And yet, in the current draft, there they are mis-capitalized once again.
Editing is not tedious for me. Dealing with persistent problems and recalcitrant writers, however, often irritates and frustrates me. You're paying me for my expert knowledge of English usage, do not turn around and dismiss my carefully-explained corrections.
Here's an example from the document I'm currently working on. In the previous draft, I standardized a set of subheadings to use parallel structure, meaning that each one used the same format, in this case an imperative statement: "do this." "Understand the impact," "provide [stuff]," "deliver through [this approach]." (Note that I'm paraphrasing these to maintain some pretense of confidentiality, because it's a draft.) One of these headings said, "Current resources are probably not best suited to deliver [stuff]," which clearly does not fit the pattern; it's a declarative statement, it simply says, "this is the case," rather than saying, "(you, the reader, should) do this." So I reworded the heading to say, "Use a dedicated resource, not your current one"—which arguably may not be the best rewording, but it does follow the pattern and could easily be adjusted while staying parallel with the other headings. I also included a comment explaining why I was making this change. Thus, it's exasperating to get back the current draft and find that someone accepted all of the other heading changes I made, so that they're using a parallel imperative structure ("do this"), but restored this particular heading to its cumbersome original version, which is clearly inconsistent with the rest. Now I have to make the change again, and explain it again, and it's likely that it will still end up in this inconsistent state in the final version.
Here's another, much shorter, example, of a typical problem I'm constantly facing: the tendency of writers to unnecessarily capitalize certain terms, job titles in particular. In the previous draft, I corrected "Distributors and Large Account Resellers" to "distributors and large account resellers." Those terms do not need to be capitalized any more than one would capitalize "doctors" or "garbage collectors" or "insurance salesmen." And yet, in the current draft, there they are mis-capitalized once again.
Editing is not tedious for me. Dealing with persistent problems and recalcitrant writers, however, often irritates and frustrates me. You're paying me for my expert knowledge of English usage, do not turn around and dismiss my carefully-explained corrections.
