It’s late, I’m working, and I have a minor grumble
I just want to say that it always irritates me when people with whom I work professionally, upon reviewing my writing, feel the irresistible urge to mark it, much as dogs mark telephone poles, just to prove they’ve been there. It’s certainly true that some people’s edits make my work better and for that I am grateful. Other people, though, just shuffle things around, often with grammatically disastrous consequences.
Ultimately, as long as these people — whom I call “existential editors” because they seem to edit only to show that they exist — pay my bills, I really shouldn’t care what they do. But as someone who, in her professional life, crafts her sentences with some care, I hate to see these existential editors fold, spindle, and mutilate that work.
