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Wade Courtney reports: <<Some of the engineers are Russian and they have
problems with their English. Ok, no worries,
but my boss has given them instructions to not worry about grammar,
spelling, or anything else because I will fix it. Editing these
documents puts me on the edge of insanity and I have to take a break nearly
every half a page. How can I tactfully handle telling my boss how I feel?>>
If their English is really bad, it makes little sense for them to waste lots
of time fixing their own grammar etc. They're hired to be engineers, not
writers, and even some native English engineers never master the art of
writing clearly. This is why hiring dedicated writers who work closely with
the subject-matter experts is a very common model for producing
documentation. In your case, it may be far more efficient for you to do all
the writing based on facts gathered during interviews with the engineers.
The engineers will love you for this because it lets them stop writing and
concentrate on developing the things that earn your company money.
If that approach won't work (for practical or political reasons) and you're
patient, you could try holding weekly meetings with the engineers to teach
them specific points of writing. For example, concentrate on subject-verb
accord and work with them until they get that figured out, then move on to
the next problem. Over time, their writing will improve. If you can keep
these meetings short and informal, nobody should object that you're trying
to "teach the dog to sing" in defiance of your boss' orders. Focus on the
most time-consuming problems first. This sometimes works with writers who
are motivated to improve; it probably won't work well with non-writers.
If your editing burden is high, adopt a different approach than you might be
less familiar with: Use their writing as source material ("just the facts"),
and rewrite it from scratch rather than trying to edit the text into
submission. For really heavy editing, this is generally far more efficient
(a better use of everyone's time) than more traditional forms of editing.
Moreover, it combines the benefits of the other two approaches I've
suggested (you, as expert writer, doing the writing, while the authors learn
better English by reviewing your writing) without creating any political
problems. Of course, you'll need to talk to your authors and convince them
that this approach saves everyone time. Do that and they'll happily accept
the solution; fail to do that, and you may be stepping hard on sensitive
toes.
--Geoff Hart, geoff-h -at- mtl -dot- feric -dot- ca
(try ghart -at- videotron -dot- ca if you get no response)
Forest Engineering Research Institute of Canada
580 boul. St-Jean
Pointe-Claire, Que., H9R 3J9 Canada
"Wisdom is one of the few things that look bigger the further away it
is."--Terry Pratchett
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