Editing

So I've been working on this paper since, oh, about June. I know that sounds completely ridiculous, and it is, but most of the comments I've had from my advisor and collaborator have been only minimally painful. For the most part they haven't meant large amounts of additional work or rewriting. The most painful part of the whole process has been waiting weeks on end to get a round of comments back from them.

I've been working on the latest round of corrections this weekend, and it's got me thinking about editing.

Most of the comments from my collaborator were adding additional words that I found unnecessary for the clarity of the paper. If I weren't hard up for space already, they'd be fine. They're not ridiculously wordy additions. But in a 2-page communication, there is absolutely no room for words that are anything less than 110% necessary, so I ignored a fairly high percentage of his "corrections."

As I was getting ready to send the latest version to my advisor, I found myself worrying that my collaborator would be annoyed at me "ignoring" so many of his comments. (I really didn't ignore them, I considered all of them, weighing them for importance vs length added.) I know that when my labmates ask me to read/edit something, and then I see a later draft where a number of my corrections have been ignored, I know I tend to be irritated. But thinking about this further, I decided that most of the instances where I'm annoyed is when the author is a non-native English speaker.

Now I'm really not trying to rip on international students, some of them work very hard at improving their English, and have reasonably good grammar. I'm fairly sympathetic to constant corrections that are clearly a result of different syntax/language construction. For example, Sri Lankan students almost always omit articles (a/an, the), so I assume this is such an issue. But I get annoyed when I'm correcting things like subject/verb agreement over and over and over again I get annoyed. I've learned enough of a foreign language to know that you most definitely learn this sort of thing whenever you learn a language. Occasional slips, sure, but every second sentence? Good grief! Anyways, I know this sounds snobby, if you've specifically asked me to read/edit for correct English, you really shouldn't be ignoring so many of my comments/corrections!

Editing is particularly painful when the English is so jumbled that I have a hard time figuring out what you're trying to say. Really. Even in graduate school, it happens. (I have serious doubts about the TOEFL.) In this case I correct based on my best guess at their point/the correct science, and make a note that they should make sure it still says what they want. (Even worse is the occasional instance when you think the author is mostly an idiot and suspect that they don't know what they're trying to say/what's correct either.)

Anyways, hopefully my collaborator won't be offended that I omitted so many of his suggestions, and please please please please please let them both read this round soon and be done making changes!