Mind Your Ps and Qs

You don’t often (if ever) get to experience other people being edited, how editors and writers interact, how editors use gentle but smart persuasion and how writers react. So I was especially interested when, during the second installment of HBO’s “John Adams” last week, there was a scene depicting Benjamin Franklin editing Thomas Jefferson’s draft of the Declaration of Independence.  “We hold these truths to be sacred and undeniable that all men are created equal, etc.,” Franklin reads aloud from Jefferson’s manuscript. “Sacred and undeniable,” he repeats thoughtfully in a tone that implies he was half-asking a question (“sacred and undeniable?”). “Smacks of the pulpit,” he says. “Does it?” Jefferson asks. “These truths are self-evident, are they not?,” Franklin asks. “Perhaps,” responds Jefferson, a little uncertain. “Self-evident then,” says Franklin. “Self-evident?” “Self-evident,” Jefferson says gently.  As this passage illustrates, editing is as much a skill as it is an art, taking into account not only your intelligence but your ability to be diplomatic, tactful, and caring. Like all art – the creation of and response to – editing is subjective. Yes, grammar has its rights and wrongs, but remember that when editing a colleague, it’s not your voice that should shine through, but the writer’s. It’s not your self-esteem on the line, but the writer’s. An editor’s “bed-side manners” can have a critical impact on the final product. Just as no two writers will write a document in the same way, no two editors will edit a document in the same way. Well-intentioned people can disagree without either necessarily being wrong. A skillful editor, like Franklin as depicted in “John Adams,” shows respect for a writer even as he shows him a better way. That should be self-evident.

Comments

[Norm Leigh]

Dan,
A helpful post on the editor-writer relationship. In fact, in the first lecture I give every semester to my writing class, I make a point of noting how Jefferson's masterful Declaration underwent editing. I tell my students this to help them understand that being edited is part of the writing process. You rightly note the importance of a gentle manner on behalf of the editor. But there's a flip side to this relationship. And that is that a writer should develop a thick skin and not take an editor's comments personally. That's easy to say but hard to do because, often, a little bit of ourselves seeps onto the page.