When Your “Editor” Can’t Edit, What Should You Do?

If you write anything longer than a Yelp review, you would benefit from a good editor. But if you write in industry or government, I’ll bet you don’t have one. Sure, you have someone who picks apart your draft. But chances are, they’re not a professional editor; they’re a gatekeeper whose revisions remind you that a little knowledge is a dangerous thing.

I’ve been writing or editing in industry and government for 44 years. For a blissful two years, I reported to a fellow professional writer. For the other 42, I’ve reported to gatekeepers: businesspeople, engineers, retired military men. A draftswoman. A former clerk. With no background in writing or editing, they would “edit” my writing. Let’s call them Gateberts, because they remind us of characters in Dilbert.

How bad at editing can a Gatebert be? Seriously bad. They can commit editorial malpractice. Like an editor from Planet Bizarro World, they can make your writing worse.

Gateberts come in three personalities:?

• The Amateur Editor
• The Hypercorrector
• The Cultural Illiterate

The Amateur Editor

Bryan A. Garner was taking a jab at the amateur editor when he wrote, “When it comes to language, people with meager knowledge like to think of themselves as experts.” Amateur editors embody the Dunning–Kruger effect: They don’t “get” grammar, syntax, and punctuation and can’t tell a rule from a convention, but they’re convinced they can edit. After all, they’ve internalized the “rules”—often superstitions—they learned in grade school from Miss Thistlebottom.

The amateur editor is not a word person. They’ve read, at most, one style book, The Elements of Style. They’d be baffled by Jacques Barzun’s advice to writers: “You must attend to words when you read, when you speak, when others speak. Words must become ever present in your waking life, an incessant concern.”

Guided by instinct, the amateur editor miscorrects. Free rein becomes free reign. Forgo the chance becomes forego the chance. Preexisting becomes pre-existing. And a list you've emphatically alphabetized by first name (PENELOPE Cruz; TERRY Crews…) now looks disordered (Cruz, Penelope; Crews, Terry…).?

One amateur editor, a retired Army sergeant, told me on my first day, “When I see a manual that uses you or your, I know it wasn’t written by a professional writer.” I almost soiled my pants.

In the 1980s, I rewrote drafts of research and development reports. One self-assured report writer had no use for my hyphens in her compound modifiers—even in a tangled sequence like “more affordable health care solutions.” I asked: “If I can find two style guides that support me, will you change your mind?” “Yes,” she promised. I showed her five. “I don’t care,” she said.?

In the 1990s, I became a federal writer/editor at a science agency, writing reports about manufacturing technology. In one report, I likened a numerical-control cutting machine to a 1910s player piano. I was hardly the first to draw that comparison. But my Gatebert—who would say He don’t for He doesn’t—slammed my imagery as “cutesy.”

In the 2000s, at Homeland Security, I would occasionally edit annual reports. To frame new information, I occasionally added sentence adverbs, such as coincidentally. My Gatebert removed them all, explaining, “Let the facts speak for themselves.”

The Hypercorrector

Eager to obey a rule, the hypercorrector overshoots. Naturally occurring radon becomes naturally-occurring radon. Hand the package to whoever is sitting there becomes Hand the package to whomever is sitting there. She sang like a bird becomes she sang as a bird. The Joneses’ house becomes the Jones’ house.

A Gatebert can be both a hypercorrector and an amateur editor. One such two-fer forbade me to use the word be. Is was fine; so were am, are, was, and were; but not be. Having been taught to avoid “be” verbs, she applied that “rule” with ruthless literalness.

The Cultural Illiterate

In the 2000-aughts, I wrote creative nonfiction articles that explained new technologies funded by the DHS Science and Technology Directorate. My Gatebert was a career federal writer/editor in the highest pay band, GS-15. A former art history major, this Gatebert could write. But born in the 1940s, she didn’t “get” cultural references more recent than bell-bottoms or The Beatles.

One day, she was reviewing my article about a tiny wireless router designed to drop from the belts of firefighters as they roamed through a smoke-filled building. The routers would form a wireless network, I explained, so firefighters could be tracked “like dots on Harry Potter’s Marauder's Map.”

“No one will know what a ‘marauder’s map’ is,” she declared. Out it came.

Our most heated culture war was waged over a second cultural reference in the same article. Each router, I had written, measured an inch square—“about the size of a Starburst.”?

Starburst candy had arrived in America from the UK in 1967. But my editor had never heard of it. Which meant, “We can’t risk it.”

I pointed out that the website starburst.com was owned by the candy maker. That a search for “starburst NEAR candy” returned millions of hits. No matter: Out it came.

What to Do?

I’ve fought many battles with Gateberts. Some battles, I won. Appealing to style guides or Google Trends didn't reliably work. Here’s what did:?

• Ask them to clarify the rule. Ask, “Sorry, I didn’t realize that ‘a barely audible sound’ takes a hyphen. Can you show me where I can learn more about that rule?”
• Don’t rub their ignorance in their face. Don’t seek out expert editors and quote them against your gatekeeper, as I did (“Her edits are mystifying”; “You’re in a no-win situation”; “My heart goes out for you”)—unless you want to get fired, as I did. As my then-roommate explained, “You were right—dead-right.”
• Pick your battles. When style guides are divided, accept the “edit,” zenlike. If you wrote sulfur and your gatekeeper wants sulphur, might either spelling do??
• Remember your self-interest. Do you want to be seen as a troublemaker? Keep your job by keeping your perspective.

• Horse-trade. “Gatekeeper, may I keep this hyphen if I forgo that em dash?” It’s surprising how often this gesture works.?
• Sidestep the matter by rewriting. A bit of realpolitik can spare you a bushel of grief.

With a pinch of tact, a dash of chutzpah, and an occasional cocktail of choice, you can appease your Gatebert with your ethos—and your writing—reasonably intact.

Note: For a copy editor’s lament—and responses (comments) from writers—see “Work Advice: How can I defend my reputation when my edits are ignored?”

? 2022 Paul F. Stregevsky

A shortened, edited version of this article, “What to do When Your ‘Editor’ Can’t Edit,” can be found at PRNews.

About the author

For more than 40 years, Paul Stregevsky has worked as a technical writer, technical editor, science writer, proposal writer, corporate writer, and personal?essayist. He lives in Maryland.?You can find him on LinkedIn.