Re: Retaining author's voice, was How to Use English

["Jeannine Klein" <jmek66 -at- gmail -dot- com>]

>Date: Thu, 12 Jul 2007 22:36:24 +1000
>From: Janice Gelb <Janice -dot- Gelb -at- Sun -dot- COM>
>Subject: Re: Retaining author's voice,  was How to Use English
       Punctuation Correctly - wikiHow
>To: Techwr-l <techwr-l -at- lists -dot- techwr-l -dot- com>
>Message-ID: <46962048 -dot- 301 -at- sun -dot- com>
>Content-Type: text/plain; format=flowed; charset=ISO-8859-1

>One of the best compliments I ever got on my
>editing was years ago when I worked for an academic
>publisher. Most of our authors were primarily
>academics rather than writers. I'd worked hard
>Turning a very tedious and messy journal submission
>into a decent read. When the author called me back
>with a few small corrections to the galley proofs,
>he said cheerfully "Wow, now that I see it typeset,
>this really reads much better" !!!

>At first I was annoyed that all my hard work was
>being ignored but then I realized that it was a
>compliment if the author himself couldn't tell
>where my edits were.

>-- Janice

I had a similar, although less cordial, experience when editing a submission
to a medical journal. The doctor who authored the piece was terribly
verbose, and it required hard labor to uncover the article's substance
without completely mangling his "voice." When I turned in the final copy,
the doctor didn't want to pay, complaining that I hadn't done any editing at
all. I had to point out to that his original article was 25 pages, while the
edited version was only 17. It did make me confident that I hadn't omitted
anything important.

Jeannine Klein
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