Under Pressure
Editing memos under a deadline.
My life needs editing.
—Mort Sahl
Last month, this letter covered categories of things editors do when they edit. Manuscript—big picture, overall structure, coherence. Fact-checking—as the name implies, pulling out things being stated as facts and using additional resources to confirm their accuracy. Proofreading—picking at nits, from punctuation to typos to spelling to layout elements to, if you’re very good, feeling buzzy in your innate antennae about why something is wrong.
Today we’ll continue to talk about editing in the workplace.
Your boss just handed you an office-wide memo she wants sent out by the end of the business day, and she’s asked you to give it a once-over. It’s 2 pm.
A colleague has asked for your feedback on a memo they’re writing. The memo will update staff on a division-wide project they’re managing that they hope to send out next week.
Despite both being called “memos,” in fact they are very different documents—and you have been charged with very different requests. So, your definition of “editing”—aka “a once-over,” aka “feedback”—will also differ in both content and attitude.
Today: the boss, who always gets to go first in line. The poor hardworking colleague has more time, so we will turn to them in a future issue.
Editing can take as long as you like, even though at some point you’ve slid over into economics, where they like to talk about “diminishing returns.” Ask any novelist or poet. Or I dunno, painter? Composer? At some point, you just have to let your baby go.
Your boss’s memo is important. Even if it’s just one page of information-free corporate doublespeak about why your division is “rightsizing,” it’s still important because she’s your boss. So, you want to get it right.
On the other hand, you have two hours to turn it around. So, forget about niceties like clearing out passive verbs or the flagrant overuse of the phrase “at the end of the day” or removing hyphens between nouns and adjectives ending in “ly.” Given the nature of this memo, you will need to do a little bit of top-end, big-picture stuff (“manuscript editing”). Otherwise, you will focus on spelling and consistency. (The memo in question does not contain facts to be checked—at least, not facts that you are able to check. If it did and you could, that would be a priority, too.)
Do a quick scan. Does the stuff in each graf relate to its opening sentence? If the third paragraph restates what the first one sort of says, strike the repetition and make sure that each paragraph states one—and only one—idea that is not addressed later.
Here’s the memo.
Whirligig company has made the difficult decision to rightsize by clearing redundancies and combining two divisions into one. HR is fully committed to aiding employees needing assistance with their future career plans.
The immediate plan includes: A) the divisions affected will be advised tomorrow morning, and b) staff in these divisions will report to a manager who has been assigned to handle the right-sizing transitional undertaking. This person will be announced Thursday.
Other plans include 1) an open-layout plan eliminating offices for staff at level 2 and lower and 2– office reassignments for levels three and above.
The Whirligig Company decision was made in a meeting held this morning and rest assurred that leadership is planning strategic steps to make transitions as smooth as possible for all involved. The reduced market for whirligigs is a driving factor in this decision, which any employee can discuss further with his immediate supervisor or Human Resources. At the end of the day, we all must work together for the good of the company.
The first sentence combines two ideas: the decision was made, and an action will be made in response to it. The second sentence in that graf is not at all related to the lead sentence and, chronologically speaking, would be more properly placed near the end of the memo. The second and third paragraphs mix incomplete lists of specific procedures with information about future meetings. The final paragraph offers more patchworks of ideas and information.
A reworking of this memo might be structured in a rough outlinke like this:
The company has decided to eliminate one division. [additional sentences discuss, say, when this decision was made and by whom]
The company needed to do this because of redundancy and other elements. [these are defined or simply noted.]
Plans for the immediate and longer-term future. [meetings and/or actions that will be taken; who will be affected.]
We are doing good things to help during this transition period. [Thing A, thing B, thing C noted.]
Pluck out text about each of these ideas and plunk it in its related paragraph. Smooth it out a bit by getting rid of phrases you don’t need anymore. Once you’ve gone through this basic reorganizing exercise and have a still messy but better-arranged document, turn to 1) spelling and 2) consistency in word use, formatting, and style. That means going through the memo multiple times, once just for spelling and at least once for the consistency factors. This one-by-one approach takes a little extra time, but it pays off. Even if it’s all you have time to do, your document will look professional no matter what drivel it’s filled with.
Spelling. If you are editing on a computer, by all means, use spellcheck. It will catch, for example, “assurred.” But then read through and re-check spelling the old-fashioned way. Even if the grammar feature flags that, for example, you meant “morning” instead of “mourning,” it likely will not catch a verboten word in your work environment.
For example, the member magazine for the Adoptive Families of America does not use the words “adoptee” or “natural mother”—at least it didn’t when I was there, and I can’t imagine that it does today. Children adopted are not “-ees”; they are human beings. And the parents who adopted them are no less “natural” than the people who gave birth to them.
Consistency, words. We have “rightsize” as one word in the first graf. Later, we have “right sizing.” One word or two? Verb (“to rightsize”) or gerund (“right sizing”)?
Consistency, formatting. After those numbers, do you want to put a parenthesis (“1)”) or a dash (“2–”)? Or, better, neither? (“Other plans include an open-layout plan eliminating offices for staff at level 2 and below and office reassignments for levels three and above.”) Level “2” (numeral)? Or level “three” (spelled out)? The elements in the plan: A (capital A) or b (lowercase b)?
Consistency, style: The first reference to the organization calls it “Whirligig” followed by a lower-case “company”; the second says it’s “The Whirligig Company.” HR (first reference) or Human Resources (second reference)? Pick one.
Here’s another example of turning an element that is inconsistent into one that is consistent. It’s from a different imaginary company involving traumatic info of a different kind.
You’ve been asked to “proofread” a proposed sign for the break room. It reads:
New Covid protocols include
• Observing social distancing (e.g., in cafeteria, bathrooms, lobby)
• You should wear a mask when interacting with the public
• Cover your mouth when coughing
You will want to adjust the items in the list so that word treatments match. Your edited sign now reads (with your changes shown in italics):
New Covid protocols include
• Observing social distancing (e.g., in cafeteria, bathrooms, lobby)
• Wearing masks when interacting with the public
• Covering your mouth when coughing
If the company has a style sheet, use it as you check spelling and consistency. If it doesn’t, make your own down-and-dirty one: Jot down words, phrases, and treatments as you see them and then make decisions about each of them and go back and apply your decisions. You can also look at other office memos and letterhead and maybe a staff directory for guidance. But if you don’t have time for that kind of guerrilla research, just make a choice and apply it throughout.
Your revised memo might look something like this:
Whirligig company leadership has made the difficult decision to right size by removing redundancies. Two departments will be combined, which will eliminate some staff positions. The decision was made by the President, division heads, and the HR Director.
The reduced market for whirligigs is a driving factor in this decision. Employees can discuss this further with immediate supervisors or HR staff.
The transitional period will begin tomorrow, Thursday, with a staff-wide meeting. Supervisors and staff in affected departments will be advised. A position has been created for a manager to handle the undertaking. The manager and their contact information will be announced at the meeting. Additional information, such as physical office space changes, also will be provided.
Rest assured that leadership is planning strategic steps to make transitions as smooth as possible for all involved. HR is fully committed to aiding employees needing assistance with their future career plans. At the end of the day, we all must work together for the good of the company.
This memo still contains your boss’s empty phrases and platitudes—so she and her ego probably will be OK with it—and it is still going to piss off everybody. But at least the information will come at them cohesively and coherently. They also will know definitively when the staff-wide meeting will be held, since this memo goes out at the end of “today,” meaning that when people read it the next morning—“tomorrow”—they won’t have to wonder what day exactly they are going to learn about their futures.
If you are editing on screen, print out your “final” version to review it again on paper, if there is time. (And by the way, never re-name your document “final.” There will be more versions, I promise you. Just add a number. (“Memo-edit 3.”) When you really, really think it’s done, rename it with a nice clean new name like “Memo-Rightsizing.”)
Lots of writing and editing sites offer details and more extensive ideas around the ones discussed above and others I didn’t. They also contain links to additional resources. You’ll start to see common denominators that should help you decide which concerns are key.
I got the idea of keeping an “error list” from 20 Essential Editing Tips (intended for writers editing their own writing), which also notes:
Some writers frequently miss the difference between “it’s” and “its,” or they type “effect” when they mean “affect.” If you consistently make any specific errors, write those down, too. Then, when you get to the editing stage, search for troublesome words using the “find” feature in your word processor.
I borrowed from 100 Proofreading Tips for Writers, too—but also left out a lot of good stuff you will want to use:
• Look for one type of problem at a time
• Edit the big stuff first, small stuff second
• Keep a checklist of elements to review
• Keep sentences shorter than 15 words
• Make sure most sentences have just one idea
• Check that verb tenses are consistent
• Look out for words that sound the same but are spelling differently
• Check for the consistent spellings of names
• Check for missing quote marks
• Be consistent with capitalization
• Remove two spaces after the period
• Be consistent with your hyphen style
• Proof the tables
• Proofread headings
• Re-check any mathematics
The Write Life and an All-Executive Administrative Assistance section within LinkedIn also have good stuff. From the former I cribbed the advice about making bullet points consistent. The latter underscores ideas throughout this issue, noting that “using a checklist can help you focus on the content, structure, tone, format, and style of your message, as well as identify any gaps or inconsistencies. For instance, consider if your email memo has a clear and informative subject line, salutation, introduction, body, and closing.”
Lagniappe: Daylight Savings Time is March 10. In most of the country, your truncated (and therefore bad) night of sleep will be repaid with months of gloriously long days. Time is a construct, of course, but it’s held some of us under its thumb for a long time. A “history facts” website I peruse on occasion tells us that back in the 16th century BCE, people worldwide use water clocks to accurately tell time. The clocks did this by moving water from one container to another. The ancient Greeks were particularly adept with a version they called klepsedra, or “water thief.” Plato and Ctesibius (of Alexandria) rigged the design to make sounds at particular times—whistling, rattling, or little noises at regular intervals, like a cuckoo clock.