The Technical Editor as Diplomat: Linguistic Strategies for Balancing Clarity and Politeness
http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/stc/tc/2003/00000050/00000001/art00009
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  peer-reviewed

Mackiewicz, Jo M. and Kathryn Riley
Technical Communication Online
2003

Abstract:

An essential component of technical editors' work is to convey to writers how their documents would benefit from revision. This task is potentially sensitive, given writers' intellectual and emotional investment in the documents they have created. The sensitive nature of the editing process is clear in Rude's (2001) advice to students of technical editing: '[A]void words that suggest inappropriate editorial intervention, especially change ' (p. 43). Rude's advice suggests an awareness of the difficulty inherent in imposing oneself into the creative process of another person. Because of the defensiveness they might encounter in writers, editors must be cognizant of how they carry out their jobï¿the language they use to convey necessary changes to writers' documents. The language editors use can either facilitate good working relationships with writers or degrade those relationships.