RE: giving feedback to non writers

["Neumann, Eileen" <ENeuman -at- franklintempleton -dot- ca>]

Hi Kate,

I've also had the problem of the SME who oversteps and starts editing for style.  Some folks do not understand the concept of writing for the public. They seem to think they're still in school, writing to impress the teacher / prof.

As everything seems to turn on hierarchy in my world, the fact that this individual ranked far above me was important. What I started to do was go straight to my manager. If manager said make all changes, I'd make them. If she said no, have a talk with the individual, I'd phone them up and try and have a persuasive chat. 

We have to do what we can, and then stop. IMO.

Cheers,
Eileen Neumann

___

I've been on vacation and only just read the past few
days worth of emails.  This topic caught me because I
have had similar problems, but no positive results to
anything I tried (all ideas which were mentioned by
the longer employed and wiser of the list).  I would
be more bothered, but I am transferring, and happily
so.  If it happens again, I will assume its me and go
in for a serious attitude adjustment.  But on to my
own particular side bar to this conversation...  

As a corollary to this topic, I had a conversation
recently with an SME that I have been working with for
the past several months.  The project we are working
on asked for several news articles relating to a
project that I was editing, and as a writer I was
asked to do them, and agreed happily.  The side news
articles that we do are a nice change from the regular
work I do and are sometimes as interesting as the
project itself.  

I did the necessary pre-work, spent about two weeks on
each of the five articles, had them reviewed by the
other two writers I work with, and sent them off to
the SME to get her opinion before sending them out. 
She proceeded to rip apart the entire article because
it was written to "dumb" for the topic (according to
her).  I have always been taught that any news article
is written at a 6th grade level, and any word that
could possibly be unknown should have some type of
definition, the usual write for your audience so that
they will understand what you are providing
information on.    

The changes the SME made (these were not suggestions
in her mind) defeated this purposes (in my mind), and
there were a few made on the basis of differences in
style (which is a huge pet peeve of mine, but I can
let it go... mostly).  I did the mature, professional
thing (in my own opinion)  and went to the SME to talk
about the changes since I did not agree with many of
them, and I tried to be very careful about how I
approached the topic so that she would know that if
she made a valid point I would be more than happy to
change things, but if not, I was not willing to change
things at the expense of the audience understanding
the topic just to make her sound smarter.  

She told me that she refused to write at the reading
levels dictated by our style guides and NEPA
guidelines because it made her sound stupid.  My
supervisor has commanded that I let it go, which is
understandable since he isn't the one leaving and will
still have to work with her, so I will make the
changes and pretend to like it, and just let it go. 
Not as gracefully as I should perhaps, but I will let
it go.  After this brief background/rant it is time to
get to the point (I know you're all waited with baited
breath at this point... )  

How do you work with someone on documents intended for
the public, who A) doesn't like the public (I realize
I did not specifically mention this, but it is another
aspect of the problem), B) doesn't want to work with
the public, despite working for them, and C) believes
that making other people feel stupid makes them
smarter, which is what I believe the SME to be doing. 
I bring this up as a corollary to the previous topic
for two reasons: the first being that I am dealing
with non-writers on writing issues, and the second,
many times the changes the SME's refuse to make so
that they don't sound "stupid" are dealing with
grammatical, word choice, overall sentence structure
problems, and organization of the main documents for
the projects.   

Because I will be leaving I am asking more towards the
idea that I will more than likely be working with
others of this ilk at my next office.  In fact, I am
almost positive of it, as it is a prevailing attitude
among this particular SME group as far as I have seen
so far.  I sincerely hope I am making a mistaken
assumption about the group as a whole and their
attitude towards writing, but fear that I am not.   

Not expecting there to be a cure, but hoping
ferverntly that I am wrong... 

Kate

"I face north, and then real sudden like turn left". 
Last of the Mohicans (the movie) 



		
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