Why I Won’t Learn Anything from Your Edits

by David Andrew Wiebe | Mar 17, 2023 | Writing

Every company has a specific way they like to communicate their message through their content. Some are a little more free flowing with it, some have detailed style guides to explain in explicit detail what they’re looking for.

I’ve written content for a variety of companies, and there are some who like to suggest a myriad of edits for their blog posts and ask me to review them.

The unfortunate reality is we’re not going to agree on things like:

• Whether it’s “barriers to entry” or “barriers for entry” (for me, it will always be the former).
• Whether to include a “to” in “it helps to bolster your marketing strategy” (I would rephrase entirely, turning it into “it bolsters your marketing strategy” and avoid the “to” altogether).
• Whether a formula should appear after or before a carriage return (I tend towards the former).
• Whether to center align or right align an image caption (my default is center). Chances are you will need to adjust your formatting once you’ve copied the content into your content management system anyway.

So, precious time is wasted in Google Docs clicking checkmarks to approve these changes while I could be dedicating more time to pressing deadlines.

The only way I will learn the way you like to write is if you give me specific feedback on why you do things the way you do. Without context, your suggested changes appear a nitpick.

You’ll prefer to have things written a certain way, and I can appreciate that. Unfortunately, I did not go to mind-reading school, and require you to generate the dartboard. Without that, I will simply aim to fulfill on your basic word count and style requirements and move onto my next urgent assignment.

You may have found a clever way to rework and polish my prose, but let’s remember who wrote it in the first place. Without my writing, you would still be staring at a blank page.

If all you are looking for is a draft, freely edit to your desired end. I will not know the mental framework you applied to arrive at the conclusions you did. No context, no learning. I do not need to be a part of it unless specific guidance is given.

From a mile high view, there’s too much “we just need a writer” thinking and not enough “we want this specific writer because…” thinking.