Need feedback?

["Hart, Geoff" <Geoff-H -at- MTL -dot- FERIC -dot- CA>]

Carol Peruzzi reports: <<Over the last year they have hired 6 qc people and
a qc manager.>>

This means 7 new people with whom you have to develop a working
relationship, and with whom you need to develop a method of working that
works for everyone. Don't forget that the new folks are going to spend their
first year on the job proving to everyone how diligent they are, which may
mean a bit of overexuberance when it comes to reviewing your work. Try to
harness that energy rather than fighting it.

<<Now, whenever they qc a new executable in our suite, they also qc the
help, which I think is a good thing.  However, now they have started
changing my sentences.  Not saying that the content is wrong, just changing
the order of my sentences, or the sentence structure.>>

This is where you need to clearly identify their responsibilities. Are they
doing quality control only on the "facts", or also on the writing? Ideally,
they should focus on the first, but also do the second where it's important
to do so. Although you should be the final authority on text changes, don't
forget that as the author, you're blind to your own assumptions and
stylistic problems, and can always stand to have your own text improved. I
say this based on 20+ years of experience as both a writer and an editor:
nobody edits their own text as well as someone else, and I emphatically
include myself in this statement.

One thing I've learned as a writer: Pay close attention to what people are
trying to change, and see if you can figure out why. You may not agree with
the specific change, but the fact that someone else misunderstood you (or
thought they could write something better) means that you failed to
communicate as well as you thought. My greatest improvements in my own
writing style have come from getting over the annoyance of being edited and
paying attention to why I wasn't communicating as well as I thought I was.
Yes, I sometimes just rant privately that the editor is being a domineering
idiot, but more often than I would have thought (ego'r'us!) I found out that
the editor had a point.

<<Additionally, they are telling ME where I should put topics in my manuals
and my on-line help.>>

If their responses are representative of the responses of the readers of
your documentation, then you need to take them seriously. Don't blindly
accept anyone's suggestions, but if you don't understand why they made a
change, always ask them to explain it. Often, you won't need to accept the
specific change, but can instead come up with a compromise that suits
everyone.

<<Finally, they will copy an entire two or three pages of the manual or
on-line help, make changes to it, and email it to me without marking the
changes.  There may only be one or two words that they want changed and I'm
supposed to read through it, word by word, and find them.>>

That's simply inappropriate, but don't assume that they're doing it
maliciously; they may simply not know any better way to get things done. In
any event, they should have some consideration for your needs. Explain the
problem to them and ask for their help in coming up with a solution that
makes your life easier without imposing an onerous burden on them.

One approach that works very well (e.g., for editing Web pages and Help
files) is to copy the text into Word and edit it using revision tracking.
The author can then easily find and review each edit and transfer the
acceptable ones back into the original (Web, Help, whatever) document using
the authoring software (rather than Word). That's far less efficient than
using only Word and revision tracking, but until someone comes up with an
editing tool as effective as the one that comes free with Word, this makes
for a very good compromise.

<<Writing, to me, is highly subjective and just because you don't like the
way I phrased something, doesn't mean it is wrong.>>

_Technical_ writing is far less subjective than you may want to believe.
It's not literature, after all. When more than one person makes the same
change to your writing, that's a strong clue that something is wrong with
the original writing. Of course, if everyone proposes a different change to
the same sentence, that's also a strong clue that the original writing may
have been okay, and that the reviewers are trying to be stylists. The only
way to be really clear about which situation applies is to get past your
anger at being edited, and start being objective about the changes. That's
not easy--and I speak from experience when I say that.

<<I feel they should only make changes if some is incorrect, misleading or
confusing.>>

Those are by far the most important changes. Convince your reviewer to focus
on those types of edits first.

<<I'm going to schedule a meeting with QC and I need to know what the norm
is, if there is one.>>

The norm is that it takes some time to develop a mutually respectful,
mutually helpful, perhaps even friendly relationship between editors or
reviewers and their authors. There are lots of emotions involved, and often
conflicting goals. Make sure to show up at the meeting with your anger fully
under control, and with a very open mind. Accept the fact that some
compromise will be necessary on your part before they'll be willing to
compromise to help you. If you can start looking on their reviews as a way
to become a better writer, you'll find the review process much less painful.

--Geoff Hart, geoff-h -at- mtl -dot- feric -dot- ca
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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