Trouble with the Editors

        There are so many different forms of writing. It is quite amazing, really. To begin with, there is the totally chill, casual writing. This type of writing includes the hastily sent text messages to roommates or parents, which often contain no grammatical correctness whatsoever and probably ten different errors that the great editors of The Wall Street Journal and The New York Times would quit their jobs and lament over. Then there is casual writing that is a bit more thought out, such as the captions that we use for the content that we share on social media. This writing may contain intentional errors, because that’s trendy nowadays; for example, we may comment “yass” instead of “yes” or “boi” instead of “boy.” Still, another form of more monitored casual writing may include a text to a crush, or worse, the dreaded break up text. Perhaps those are some of the most important texts we send. Sometimes it takes several drafts to get them just right.
        And then we have the writing that is more formal. Emails are a good example—they are formal, yet conversational. With emails, it is often about striking the perfect balance between a casual and professional tone. Some emails may allow for a blend of casual and business-like writing, while others necessitate more formality. It’s all about assessing your audience and knowing what fits best. We would hope you’re not emailing your professors in the same way that you’re emailing your classmates about a dreaded group project.
        Next, there is the academic writing that we celebrate for formal papers. Now, if you’re an English major like myself, then maybe you don’t mind this as much. However, I’ll respect the fact that not every student wakes up in the morning and rejoices at the fact that they have a 10 page paper to write. This form of writing is one of the most formal forms that many of us students experience. These papers are the grown up version of the typical five paragraph essay format: they include a paragraph or so for the introduction and thesis, three or more for the evidence that proves the thesis, and  a couple for the summary and conclusion. Not every paper follows this format to a T, however, this is the basic structure of an essay. MLA formatting is common for papers in liberal arts classes. The information in the header must be in the correct order, and my last name followed by the page number should be listed on each page. Margins are precisely one inch, and there is double spacing between lines. The font is the classic Times New Roman and 12 point (or maybe 14 if your professor is blind).
        Finally, some of us may have to write for work. In my case, writing for work involves crafting news releases and stories for the school alumni magazine. When writing news releases, I rely on the news-style writing that I have learned in my communications classes. It’s reminiscent of old school journalism (that era before “fake news”)—no excess fluff, nothing opinionated, and remembering to include the who, what, when, where, why and how are vital aspects of writing these news releases. Insert a quote from a source and add “she says” or, if you want to get really fancy, write something like “she shares” or “she adds” at the end. And that’s it, that’s the release. APA formatting instead of MLA. However, when telling the stories of retiring staff or current students for the magazine, I take on a more friendly, warm tone. Some of those same rules regarding news releases apply, but they apply in a more relaxed way. Needless to say, we students may be expected to write differently for different aspects of our jobs.
        And yet somehow, we manage to keep all these forms of writing straight in our heads. In fact, we are able to switch back and forth between forms of writing pretty seamlessly. And we have to, for our editors. Now, perhaps when you hear the term editor, you think of that strict person in a TV show who, sitting behind their cluttered desk, begrudgingly accepts a story from a newbie writer and then throws it back at them and tells them to do something else with their lives. But it’s not only these people who are editors. Because in reality, the editor is whoever is reading our writing. The editor can be a teacher, a classmate, a boss, a friend, or just some random person reading our words. And these editors bring with them to our writing a world of knowledge and ideas which are uniquely shaped to their experiences. They will then read our content and calculate whether or not it fits in with the conventions of the given genre of writing. And they will judge us, sometimes subconsciously and sometimes more purposefully, for how we articulate ourselves. They will come to our written ideas with ideas of their own. They will come to our writing with the red pen of judgement, so to speak. And they’ll scribble and scratch and mark our words, scanning for errors.
        Maybe it is the drive that all writers have to become better communicators, or maybe it is just the fear of the red pen, but I always find myself being my own worst editor. I always try harder to meet the standards of the editors around me. And I’ve come to realize that, ultimately,  my work has never been entirely my own. Each piece that I write is influenced by what I think others will think. I often write to their standards, and not my own. So my writing endures the change which the editor in my head imposes upon it, before the editors in real life ever see it. I anticipate their judgements and write to avoid those judgements. What I write is battered and tugged this way and that, painfully losing parts of itself through rubs of an eraser or simple drags and clicks of a computer mouse. Each text, caption, email, essay and news report that I craft this semester will serve its time under my eye, under careful scrutiny, until I am able to conclude that it isn’t problematic. Even this article that you are reading now will have faced a reckoning. What you’re reading now has no doubt been polished and retouched, tweaked to the liking of its audience.
        Now, it must be said that writing is very much a communal act. We’ve all heard that saying, “it takes a village to raise a child.” Similarly, it takes a university to write a paper. Because of the social nature of writing, editing is necessary if we are to communicate effectively to our audiences. In fact, editing is one of the most important aspects of writing; through editing, we are able to take words that may have only made sense to ourselves and adapt them so that they make sense to our audiences as well. Writing is meant to be shared, and it’s important that we take advantage of the editing process as a way to refine and clarify the ideas that we want to convey and the messages that we have to give. Editing is the difference between the barely legible, rough first draft and the finely tuned final product that we writers take so much pride in. Any good writer knows that the editing process is a crucial part of developing a piece of writing —without it, our stories would suffer from lack of clarity and directness. Without it, what you read now would likely be just a hodgepodge of seemingly separate ideas. Editing helps to improve the flow of our thoughts.
        However, it’s important to acknowledge that we write under the influence of others, according to what is acceptable, and according to what we’ve been taught. And what’s more, once we’re finished performing the process of self-regulation with our writing, we pass it on to others who review it. So we may write the first draft, but our editors will co-write the second. And so, for our writing to retain some valuable essence of what we’ve said even after it has been judged by ourselves and our editors, it is vital that in our first drafts we write the truth as we see and hear it. We should write the truth of others, and the truth of ourselves. We ourselves or our editors may read our truths and suggest or even demand that these truths be added to with more truths, that truths be taken away, or that some be modified. Our words may be watered down and made acceptable. Even so, we can learn from the edits that are inflicted, observe the changes which are made, and aim to write in such a way that we remain true to our own messages even as we strive to create content which abides by conventional standards of spelling and grammar. Even though it may be heavily regulated and censored, the truth will remain present in our words. It may require the most attentive readers, and it may even necessitate reading in between the lines, but nevertheless, truth will persist.