Don't take it personally

People are very sensitive about their writing. It’s personal. You are revealing your innermost thoughts, your personality, even if it is just a short text. There is nothing worse than asking someone to review something you wrote and having it returned all marked up.  

When I started writing professionally, I would cringe when I submitted an article to Bloomberg’s magazine editor, and it was reordered and reworded. Still, the article was published. Clearly, they felt I had something worth printing, but all I saw was the rewrite. 

The tables turned many years later when I became editor of a technical writing department. Not only was I responsible for editing all the materials we produced, but I was asked to conduct classes in speaking and writing for anyone interested, and specifically for managers who were required to attend. I offered to review any materials they wrote as a courtesy. Taking me up on this, a young engineer and product manager, asked me to edit his white paper. German was his first language, and the writing showed this. I returned it to him with considerable mark-ups. Poor fellow, I had thrust a dagger in his heart. He asked me, “Couldn’t you have just said good job?” No, I really couldn’t, the white paper needed a lot of work, but he was so proud of it. In his mind, I had attacked him personally.  

Nowadays, I produce the programs for my chorus. One member likes to write. She always volunteers to write or edit anything the program might require. Overall, her writing is quite good, but everyone needs editing, even me. I noticed that she often would tell me, after a program was published, that I missed an edit. I didn’t miss the edit. I did not agree with the edit. Recently, I decided to explain to her why I did not accept an edit. I told her the sentence was written passively, and that active voice was a better choice. She responded haughtily. That was my opinion. If I was going to be that way, she wasn’t going to write anymore. 

I’ll admit, people find me blunt, but in both these situations, the writers felt personally attacked. It was like I told them they were fat, or their noses were too big. Think I should back off? Let me tell you why editing is important.

Most people do not write as well as they think they do. Sometimes their sentences ramble, they use too many words or words that are too complicated, related ideas are scattered throughout, there could be misspellings, lack of subject-verb agreement, poor punctuation, and many other common errors. So what?

Errors like this make documents difficult to read. If a document is hard to read, you won’t read it. If it is hard to read, the message taken from it could be wrong. In technical documents, a misunderstood message could result in lawsuits, and even death, such as reversing polarity on an electrical installation.

So how do you get people to take editing less personally? Editing is important for the above reasons, but it is also important to the writer. Editing should never be thought of as criticism in the negative sense of the word, but as constructive criticism. When you perceive the editing as constructive, your writing improves. If you don’t understand the reason for the edit, ask. Editors are not always right, and writers are not always wrong. You will both learn from the experience.

Here is one of my biggest takeaways from being edited by others. If something I wrote is revised to say something unintended, that is an indication I did not write it well to begin with. You do not need to accept the revision, instead use it as a guide for correcting the confusion. Remember, your intent as a writer is to communicate. You can only do this, by writing well. Accepting editing gracefully makes you a better writer.