The Streak

So I'm in my last week off before starting my new job a week on Tuesday (the coming weekend is a long weekend with a public holiday next Monday). My editing commitments are all finished. Here's a look back at my two and a half months as an editor.

 November was a case of getting brought up to speed, to get used to the house style, the expected level, the turnaround times. There were a number of conference abstracts, and a letter to reviewers to edit, in addition to the usual articles. Only three premium editing jobs came my way, and after a bit of an iffy start with the first one, I had a better understanding of what I was doing. But yes, I did a job worth seven dollars. That's not the sort of thing they sell grad school to people with.

 Busy! I was forewarned that December is a busy month, as academics the world over say "we need to get this paper out before Christmas". As it was, I was sent even more jobs that this but declined some to have a break over Christmas. I essentially made EI-level money in December, and did the editing to such a level that I had an offer made to me just before Christmas to accept a fixed monthly salary for a set number of words both editing and reviewing others' editing. Had I worked the whole month without a break, I could have made substantially more than this, which is what I told the person who made me the offer. I didn't hear back till nearly a month later after being told "give me a couple of days to respond to your points". Not clever.

As was sort of expected, January began somewhat slowly, due to academics being on Christmas vacations or marking/writing exams. The job that provoked a serious venting of spleen to the powers that be is the one at the very top. Two jobs were multi-round edits that I got paid nothing for. As it was, the fact I was offered a job on Jan 16th meant I could give two weeks notice and drift off into the sunset having turned down jobs because I didn't need to do them. I was slightly miffed that my streak of 13 consecutive scores of 4 in my quality feedback ended in the last job. Either I had got to the level they were completely happy with, or they were trying to butter me up into staying on as an editor in the evenings or weekends (I had to tell them 'no thanks' in polite, but increasingly firm fashion). I did think my streak would end at the hands of one particular reviewer. Thanks to me having nothing to do the last Friday afternoon of my time as an editor, here are the stats by editor and job level:

According to their information for reviewers, a score of '4' essentially means the document is ready for the client and no further editing, or minor, cosmetic editing is required. A '3' meant some revision was required, a '2' meant there were serious things missed or errors made. I never troubled the scorers of the '1' column. The top three reviewers (whose names I have redacted) in the list above gave me an average mark well above their average across all editors as a whole according to the montly newsletter that was sent in early January. The fourth gave me one below her average mark. Maybe she didn't like my writing style, but I was convinced the streak was going to end at the hands of "S". As it was, it ended at the hands of the reviewer that gave me highest average. I did find it strange that there were such disparities between reviewers, and that premium jobs were only reviewed by the top two editors in the list. That probably explains the high average mark for premium jobs.

I know I grumbled (amongst other things) about:

• the rates (which I think are far too low, given the effort and fact checking that goes into such work)
• the fact jobs were sent while I was asleep, so couldn't accept them, or had to react in chaotic fashion the next morning
• that authors have not read the author guidelines for the journal they are submitting the manuscript to
• documents being sent without figures, references, and sometimes both 
• being told to leave sections of documents alone, even though there are clearly things wrong with them
• the fact that one of my pieces was made a dogs' dinner of
• that other jobs were reviewed by being 'run through spellcheck'
• being SHOUTED AT IN ALL CAPS in a review
• being consistently marked down by one reviewer
• being sent a job purporting to be 6400 words when it was actually 19000, which was impossible given the deadline, and only being paid for half of what I did do
• being effectively told on one occcasion "don't exceed the customer's expectations"

but the work helped fulfil the roles of keeping a roof over my head and not making me go completely mad with boredom while I waited on my new employer getting back to me. It also reminded me just what a far-reaching and wide ranging subject chemistry is, and why I still enjoy reading and learning about it, even after all these years. Even the paper about the oxygen permeation depth in the composting of pig manure.

I do, however, think that there needs to be some minimum level of document compliance for such services; I lost count of the number of jobs where tables were entered as screengrabs, rather than entered in as tables in MS Word, or where figures were too small as to be unreadable. I also think that the people at academic journals who decided that documents should be submitted in document templates which resemble the final article will first against the wall, come the revolution. Yes, RSC, I'm looking at you in particular, and take note from your American cousins; it is very hard to proof read page after page of double column, single-spaced text for hours on end. I'm bewildered that in this day and age, authors still insert references manually, rather than using programs like EndNote, leaving poor schmucks like me to have to edit fifty or sixty references to make the formatting conform to the journal's requirements. Or that some of the worst ChemDraw I've ever seen is deemed acceptable, or that a superscript lower case 'o' is used in place of a degree symbol. I would be embarrased to to submit some of the things that have come across the Beige Towers desk. But most of all, I'm puzzled that the word "conversely" seemingly doesn't exist in Japanese.

Happy New Year

So happy New Year to you all out there. I know, you're thinking "it's 1:55pm, you should be working". You'd be right. I've spent from 9:00 till now writing an email to my managing editor about the, er, curious editing to a 40 page document I uploaded on Friday teatime. The working day is pretty much lost now, so I'm going to write about this instead. What better way to ring in the New Year on here than to vent some spleen. They actually offered me a fixed contract with a fixed salary before Christmas, but haven't replied to my counter offer or follow-up emails, and suspect that after this I won't receive one. I have redacted parts to comply with my confidentiality agreement. 

********* 

 Re: Editing/Revisions to XXXXXXX

Hi XXXXX.

 I hope that you are well. I have felt up to this point that further edits to my assignments at the review stage have enhanced the documents further. However, I am unhappy with some of the additions made to XXXXXXX. In particular, I am unhappy with the following two revisions (underlined words were added by the reviewer): 

(1) "xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx "
(This is the first sentence of the introduction. Most of this sentence was revised, but the misuse of the word "the" really stands out) and 

(2) "xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx"
These to me are clear misuses of definite articles within a sentence. If I received such sentences in a document, they would be the first things revised. The phrase "xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx" is also not optimal; "adverse effects" or "detrimental effects" read much better, similarly "xxxxxxxxxx" is less than ideal in comparison to "living organisms", which was introduced in the second revised sentence.

I spent approaching 15 hours editing that document. I agree with the greater part of the revisions made, as a different pair of eyes can see things that a pair that sees the same document for three days in a row can miss. However, the introduction of (in my view) prominent, unnecessary errors detracts from the end result. The document has been sent in my name to the client, as I have attached my name to the editor's report. I am somewhat unhappy at being represented as someone without a grasp of something as fundamental as the use of articles in a sentence.

Should the same situation occur in the future, and I disagree with revisions that have been made to my work, what course of action should I take? There is no way to directly respond to the feedback left in "my report" on the xxxxxxxxx. If the document has already been sent back to the client (as is indicated in the feedback), it is arguably already too late. If the client finds the two sentences highlighted in this email unsatisfactory (as he/she should), I will be the one to have my work potentially graded "unsatisfactory" in client feedback.

I apologise for the length of this email. I will always take on board criticism where it is warranted; accepting criticism is the only way to improve performance. I think my performance is much improved from when I began my association with xxxxxx. That said, I take great pride in my work and do not like to see unnecessary, highly visible errors introduced after many hours spent on a document. 

Best wishes, 

Andrew 

**************** 

I'm not sure that I'll see the promotion to a contract now, but I'm sorry, I won't spend three days working on a document for only 80% of my rate (due to it exceeding 8000 words), to see it cocked up in such fashion and not speak up. Someone once told me the first sentence of the introduction is the most important in any paper; it's the one that has to grab the reader and convince them you know what you're talking about and that you can convey your ideas clearly. The revised first sentence sent to the client makes me look like a rank amateur with a tenuous grasp of the English language, not someone with two degrees and nearly 20 years' worth of technical writing experience. So, so annoyed. Can you imagine how cross this email was before I had someone else look it over to see whether it was too cross (she said it was)? I'm not going to work for this outfit for a second longer than I have to.

Busy

So where were we?

New posts on here have been a bit thin of late, but since I actually have something to do during the day now, I can't spend all my day wittering away on here. I'm now two weeks into being a freelance editor. While it isn't paying riches yet (nor is it likely to), I'm beginning to get an idea of how much I can do in a day. The first couple of weeks have been getting used to the process, seeing what my managers in Mumbai want in terms of style, level, detail and so on. I've now sent 14 jobs back, my average feedback rating is now climbing, and they're starting to send me longer jobs at the Premium edit level (as opposed to Standard Edit). Because they're now sending me Premium jobs my average rate has now climbed to the giddy heights of $17.79 USD per 1000 words.

Due to the 12.5 hour time difference, it's a bit frustrating to apparently miss out on jobs (due to emails saying that they've been withdrawn) more than once because I've been in bed sound asleep and can't accept them. I've sent them an email today saying "please can you send me emails between 10pm and midnight"

I did my first thing today for an apparently difficult client, a ten page (!!) response to reviewers. We shall see whether he says of me, like he does of many others on his feedback page "do not let this person edit my work ever again"

Tinkering

I've made my first foray into the nefarious world of editing HTML tonight, in an attempt to make the blog entry column wider. While this has worked, the images for the nice rounded corners are for a column of specific width. This has ultimately meant a total width to the blog of 980 pixels, which might be pushing the screen resolution of some older monitors. Can you all read it out there (all five of you, or whatever it is)? Or shall I go back to the old version?