Appreciation and my niche

While I had been initially turned off to the idea of using a formal editing style ― mostly due to my frustration because it was so foreign to me ― I have come around to more fully appreciating it. This appreciation comes in two categories:

The first is that I appreciate the respectability that comes with a well-edited document. I have combed over numerous documents, all written by knowledgeable people, but because of their editing mishaps on their part, they lost a bit of credibility in my eyes. Granted, their knowledge of editing bears no direct connection with their knowledge of, say, counseling, but I still see them differently. This is similar to an interview; he probably has the qualifications, but if he looks disheveled, the employer probably won’t take him seriously. I went to a Senate Finance Committee hearing last week, and unfortunately for them, the person that drafted the hearing schedule didn’t appear to have any knowledge of editing whatsoever.

The second point of appreciation is for the critical eye editing has afforded me. There is a lot of BS. A lot that people say, and a lot that people write. But prior to this, I read, in large part, with the mentality that “I should absorb what this person is saying because there must be something to be learned from it.” But repeatedly, different departments have misquoted people, misquoted numbers, and made claims that are, perhaps, a bit bolder than the information permits. The process of seeing a fact in one of the drafts, initially questioning it (but only mildly), and eventually seeing that the writer had misrepresented the information, has changed and will, hopefully, continue to change my perspective in a way that will prompt me to challenge facts as I read them, instead of simply accepting and attempting to process.

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But finally, on one of the last couple documents, I was able to work a bit with the layout. It was a newsletter/announcement from one of the departments at ED, and it had a number of graphics and pictures in addition to print. This was very similar to the work I was doing this summer for an House campaign in Minnesota. And of all the documents I have edited, I enjoyed this one the most. I like the freedom and creativity that comes with it — if you count page layouts as a creative form of expression.

So I asked to be given any layout-type documents, so that I would be able to have that bit of creativity while using the respectable, AP-style editing.