The Vine: June 3, 2015
I’ve been working as a freelance writer for about a decade now.
Most of my work has been in the form of articles and columns, where I submit a piece, get some edits back from a professional (or at least titular) editor or maybe edits are just done with my input, and then a check appears. Recently I started doing work for a family member’s consulting business, providing blog posts as a ghostwriter and now editing/creating web content for his clients’ business sites.
Now I find myself submitting content and getting edits back from people who have no idea what they’re doing and I am not sure how this goes. For (fictional but analogous) example, they do Plexiglass storm windows — and they want all instances of “Plexiglass” and “storm windows” to be capitalized in their text. “Plexiglass” is pretty widely genericized, I think, but not officially, so I’ll give them that, but “Storm Windows”? How do people deal with something like that? Explain politely why it is incorrect? (They changed my changes back and made a specific request.) Let it go? (It feels sloppy to say, “Well, my name isn’t on it, so….”)
I asked Family Member about his take on this, but considering he suggested copying text from competitor websites, I’m not sure it’s going to be enlightening. Just something I thought I’d ask your opinion on. Thanks!
H
Dear H,
In that specific case, I’d just make the changes. You see “Realtor” and “Real Estate” capitalized on some realty websites; it’s an industry thing, and it’s a little bit sad, to me, but if that’s what the client asked for — and isn’t insisting on a phrasing like “your welcome to call us” — then I’d just leave it.
What I tell editing clients — and myself when, as seems to happen every blessed time, they take allllllll the hyphens out on the second pass and I have to put them allllllll back in again — is this: they’re paying for my work. I’ve made the edits and furnished track-changes copies. What they do with that work is up to them. They can right-click “accept all” and trust that I know what I’m doing. They can go through and incorporate the changes they like and reject the ones they don’t. They can holler “vengeance is mine, saith ‘acomodate’!” and trash the lot; their call. You can fix text, you can show people how you fixed it, but you can’t make them care about fixing it.
If it’s a more flagrantly incorrect locution they don’t want to change, or a questionable phrasing (i.e., it sounds bigoted), I’ll push back, but for something like this, if you’ve reminded them that it’s non-standard but they still want it in there, it’s not a violation of editing ethics to let it go at that point, so: let it go.
Tags: grammar workplace
Oh, I feel your frustration, LW; I do a lot of proofreading in my job, much of which is business/marketing material.
Over time, I’ve sort of developed a rule that if a client is talking about its own product—even if that product is something generic, like “free checking” or “insurance”—it gets to do whatever it wants with the name. But I also subscribe to the rule of proof-jitsu, the gentle art of finding the one place the client wrote something (I guess in your case, this would be “left something written”) the way you’d do it yourself and marking other instances with little notes that say, “I see ‘storm windows’ doesn’t have initial caps below: should we make these consistent?” Because even though it may be futile, sometimes you have to nudge—not too often, though, and likely more for the sake of your own conscience than anything else.
I write advertising for a living and get these kinds of requests all the time. All you can really do is offer your rationale behind doing it the correct way (AP style, industry standards, clarity of phrasing, etc.) but if the client is hell-bent on stupid usage there’s not a lot you can do but grind your teeth and cash their check. Oh, and save a correctly edited version for portfolio purposes.
I usually hate the sentence, “The customer is always right.” (because I find it primarily used to justify letting people abuse your service employees) but in this case, it applies. For minor sins like this, arguing with them is only going to insure that you don’t get any future work. Save arguing for major errors, something with the potential to embarrass the company.
I agree with Sars–as long as the Big Cheese (whoever that is) knows what’s going on. I did some proofing for a family member’s business and learned, after I had lost the gig and didn’t know why, that the admin assistant (who was supposed to be passing my work on to the boss) was rejecting some of my edits. So the boss was getting error-filled work that she thought was from me. By the time I’d found out what was happening, they’d already hired a new proofreader.
W….hat? I hope they also got themselves a new admin assistant!
Unnecessary pedantry – the Realtor thing is slightly different –
http://danshousestudio.com/blog3/2010/10/08/why-is-realtor-capitalized/
http://www.realtor.org/letterlw.nsf/pages/TrademarkLogoFAQs (they would prefer ALL CAPS ACTUALLY)
I begrudgingly agree with Sars, because it’s what the client wants. I edit/proofread as a side job, and I don’t always agree with the “house style”, but it’s what is expected of me. In addition, my name is not usually attached to the final product. If it was, then I would put up more of a fight.
However, when I go to websites and see random words capitalized, it makes my eyes twitch. I understand it may be an “industry standard”. Moreover, I think the purpose is to make the product stand out. There are better, graphical ways to do this (e.g., different font, font size, font color, etc.) that don’t involve breaking cardinal grammar rules.
Isn’t Plexiglass (or some variation thereof) a trademarked term?
sam – according to wikipedia, yep it still is.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_generic_and_genericized_trademarks
I think so, but Storm Windows is definitely not.
@katie — I used to work as a sports copy editor and it was my great joy to change the BIG EAST into the Big East. A few other leagues and organizations did dumb shit like that and it drives me bonkers.
Another sports-y pet peeve along these lines: administrators and coaches who’ve been told to use the deeply stupid and insincere term “student athlete” instead of “players” in all instances, even in situations where it makes no sense. If you’re debating the merits of NCAA pay in an op-ed, call them student athletes. If you’re giving a postgame interview and discussing specifically what they did on the field, call them players.
Business/legal editing here.
I have, in college, done “adult modeling.”
I have also left the phrase “value-added commitment” in a published work that people are actually going to see.
The latter feels far dirtier and more shameful than the former ever could–but it also comes with health benefits, so.
Push back gently. When that doesn’t work, put five cents of your paycheck into the Vodka Fund for every one of the “house style” elements you have to let through.
“Value-added commitment” is what, a dowry? :)