Re: Editing comments too harsh?

["Susan W. Gallagher" <sgallagher -at- EXPERSOFT -dot- COM>]

At 02:17 PM 9/6/96 EDT, Wiley, Karen P. wrote:
>I have a question that was sparked by all this reference to colors of ink.
>Does everyone edit hard copy only or do some of you edit online?


If the piece I'm editing is from an engineer/programmer for inclusion
into a manual, I have "ownership" even though someone else originated it.
Most often, I edit, reorganize, reword, add, and subtract online, then
return the revised ms -- in hard copy -- to the originator. The hard
copy often has questions, requests for more data, and suggestions for
major revisions that I was unsure of. I also ask the "originator" to
verify that I haven't broken the meaning while fixing the words. I would
never ask an engineer/programmer to make grammatical or formatting edits.
They have enough of their own work to do.

If I'm editing another writer's work, I would never make changes to
the electronic version because that writer maintains "ownership" of the
document and any edits I suggest should be made at their discretion. Of
course, because it's another writer, I'm not always particularly
diplomatic.  ;-) But, because the "relationship" between the writer and
I is (or should be) predefined, diplomacy never seems to be an issue.
They just get even!  ;-)



Sue Gallagher
sgallagher -at- expersoft -dot- com
     -- The _Guide_ is definitive.
        Reality is frequently inaccurate.

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