Balancing Constraints
Balancing Constraints
How far should I take this edit? This question is probably the one most frequently asked by editors. It's a tough question, and unfortunately, the exact answer varies from project to project. The good news is that there are four general guidelines to help you make that call:
Client instructions
Deadlines
Ethical and moral considerations
Your return
Clients don't always understand the difference between editing and proofreading. You can do your best to guide clients when they are selecting the service they want you to perform, but they might need a little help along the way.
That's why it's important to look at the client's written instructions as well as the quality of the writing in the document. If the client says, "I want you to be very tough and tell me if my arguments work here," but has asked you to proofread, you know that what the client really wants is editing. At this point, you can take the necessary steps to inform the client he or she needs a different service. If you edit for a company, you should consider contacting your customer service representative so he or she can inform the client of the problem. The earlier you identify miscommunication, the easier it will be to deliver the service that the client truly needs.
There are two different types of deadlines: 1) the deadline you've been given to do the edit and 2) the client's deadline.
Obviously, if you've been given a deadline of eight hours for a large document, you cannot agonize over every nuance, take a break, and come back to it later, nor can you relax over a cup of tea while editing. You must do as thorough a job as possible as quickly as possible. You also have to be realistic about what parts of your critique and criticism the author is likely to act upon.
Consider this example. If, at 9 p.m., the client submits a document and says, "I have to hand this essay to my professor TOMORROW at 6 a.m.!!!!!" The client is probably unlikely to act upon your advice that his or her main argument is flawed and needs major redrafting. You should still point out that flaw to give the client a chance to consider it, and you should provide guidance to the author on how to address it, but it will probably not be worth spending an entire hour out of the time allotted to you writing a long and detailed comment about how to reorganize the text.
The bottom line is, while you have a deadline to follow, the editing, proofreading, and revision doesn't stop when you give the document back to the client. Remember that the client has to spend some time with the document before it can be "finished." In the example above, if the client receives the edited document at 5 a.m., he or she will only be able to make a few changes before submitting it for a grade.
If you get a great deal of student work, you must be careful how much you alter a text. On one hand, you must remember that many students have never received proper instructions on how to write an essay, and they likely don't get very much help from overloaded academic advisers or teaching assistants. On the other hand, you definitely do not want to be in the essay-writing business, so you must be very cautious about the type of support you provide. It would be unethical to take bullet points or rough notes and turn them into paragraphs. That's the responsibility of the writer.
Editors also need to be on the lookout for plagiarism. Sometimes you will receive essays with whole paragraphs or entire pages of text copied and pasted wholesale from another source. In these cases, it is unethical to edit or change the text in any way. In cases where you suspect plagiarism, mark the text in question with a comment and politely and gently advise the client that it either needs proper citation or it needs to be written in the author's own words.
Plagiarism is an extremely serious offense, and many people are not aware of what plagiarism entails. Be vigilant!
The final consideration an editor needs to take into account is the return on the document. Clearly, if you take 10 hours to edit a 1,200 word document, you're not going to get a very good rate of return. That said, if it is taking you that long to edit something so short, something has gone badly wrong with either your own editing or the document in question.
Two factors should be included when calculating your return. The first is that investing time in training like this will help you be a faster, more efficient editor, which in turn allows you to "go deep" more quickly and provide more value to the client. But it's not just this training that gives you the tools to succeed. The work itself will teach you in innumerable ways.
The second factor is that while some documents will be extremely difficult to edit, and other documents will be a breeze, you should think in terms of your overall average. And indeed, the client for whom you toiled so endlessly is very likely to come back to you regularly (which means steady work) and, thanks to your tutelage, with better documents (which means easier work).
In editing, as with life, it's important to look at the big picture.
The prospect of having their work edited evokes fear or anxiety in many authors. Many emerging writers have been subjected to clumsy or blatantly malicious critiques. This can make the prospect of being edited a truly terrifying experience for an author. Understand this is a primal reaction and not always a logical one, and also understand that it is your responsibility as an editor to make the author feel comfortable receiving feedback.
When all is said and done, any assignment accepted by an editor is still the writer's work. No editor ever wants to hijack a client's work, and this should be made clear to the client or author. The editor should only ever strive to help develop the document into the best possible piece of work it can be.
Last Updated: 09/29/2022