Editor’s Note: A version of this article was originally published in the STC Notebook in November 2013 as the third in a series. Over the course of 2022, we hope to publish more of these articles. To make it easier for you to find these articles again in the future, they will be tagged with the Eye for Editing tag, and the titles prefaced with the same phrase.
Skipping to what is one of the most important skills to have in editing, this month I want to talk about how we relate to the other person in the form of a review of their work. It may be a writer colleague, an engineer or software developer, your manager, the CEO, or a client. You might not have met the person or even know who they are. But you’re not just editing content. Reviewing someone else’s work can be a rather intimate way of relating to another human being.
In 2021, I presented an STC webinar titled “Editing Mistakes I’ve Made So You Don’t Have To.” I covered some best practice tips on how to edit efficiently in terms of mechanics. I recounted several specific “don’ts” that I learned the hard way. But the worst mistakes I’ve made were in how I related to the person on the other end of the review.
One example I give is from a long-ago peer editing situation. I returned to a coworker a hardcopy markup on which, among other marks, I had written “Spellcheck!” in red ink at the top. Later I found out that not only was that person upset, but the rest of the team was offended, too.
What had I done to upset the whole group in a single review?
Was it the red ink? We all know now not to use red ink for a markup on paper, right? Any other contrasting color is less likely to remind someone of a test or assignment they got back from a teacher. You don’t want the writer to feel like they’re being graded.
Was the person embarrassed at being caught in such an obvious mistake—that of not running spellcheck? Likely, that was part of it…
But what offended them the most was the exclamation mark. What I considered just a tiny stroke of punctuation conveyed a lot more than that. I later realized that what it probably “said” to them was something more like:
You idiot!!! Why didn’t you run spellcheck?!
That tiny exclamation mark implied judgment on my part, a negative, emotional reaction to my peer’s mistake. Probably not the best way to relate to your peers…
The team’s collective response was emotionally negative in kind. Can you blame them?
I confess that I didn’t understand all this at the time. Obviously, I didn’t forget it either.
Now I know that as editors or reviewers of the work of others, we have a responsibility to avoid colors, marks, and remarks that imply a negative evaluation of a person’s work and evoke a negative reception to our otherwise well-meaning comments. The person is likely to distrust all of our suggestions because of the way they were presented. It doesn’t bode well for an ongoing collaboration.
Attached to the content we edit is another human being. Who knew that people skills are not restricted to in-person, phone, or email communications? They are also embedded in our technical edits. And that deserves a big “!”
Paula Robertson has learned her editing skills over a long and varied career, while swapping among the various titles of writer, editor, and designer. No matter what her current job title, she has earned the right to call herself the Full-service Editor, because of her ability to review text and graphics as cohesive parts of a whole. In STC, her current job title is facilitator for the Solo Technical Communicator SIG/COI. You can reach her at: solotechnicalcommunicator@gmail.com
Always a great reminder! I have definitely been guilty of this. Some superiority creeps in as I edit and I feel justified in the exclamation mark…but it is so unkind.
I have referred to this on occasion as good page-side manner
Thanks Tim! I was looking through my posts in this series and just found your comment! So glad it was helpful and continues to be useful to you.