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We've all been there. A client hires you, a professional writer, to produce copy for their website and, before publishing, makes error-inducing changes to your copy without your consent. This leaves us wondering why the client paid for our services rather than doing the job themselves. It also leaves us not wanting to include this assignment in our portfolio as prospective clients or employers will read it and think that we, the industry professional, produced this inferior copy. This situation is certainly not good for our reputation or morale but what do we do about it?
I was in precisely this situation some while back and it still irks me to this day. To make matters worse, my client was a foreign language speaker yet still saw fit to make changes to my work. I mulled it around for days, which turned into weeks, but eventually chose to leave it. From a professional perspective, this was the wrong thing to do but I could not bring myself to confront my client. So how do we deal with situations like this?
Firstly, we must always remember that this is our professional reputation at stake. It is our livelihood and if we keep quiet when our work is messed with, it is us who will suffer, not those who were actually responsible for making our copy inferior. Unfortunately there are also industry professionals who meddle with copy, which, in my experience, have been overworked, stressed out sub-editors whose minds have not been completely on the task at hand. As a copy editor myself, I edit my own work before submitting it and, in my early days of freelancing, magazine editors did not make any changes to my copy. But this is certainly not the norm. Again, the responsibility is on us to read our published copy word-for-word and, if error-inducing changes have been made, notify the editor in writing.
While some editors send the final proof of a writer's work to the writer, many do not have the time to do so. In one instance, the final proof of my article was sent to me and the last letter of my surname had dropped off. So it happens all the time and we have to be proactive if we want to reduce such situations. Many freelancers draw up contracts before undertaking an assignment. It can be handy to include a clause which states the writer must have a chance to read through the final proof prior to publication. And in order to ensure the editor or publisher has sufficient time to do so, submit your copy well within your deadline. This shows you are doing everything in your power to help the editor meet your prerequisites. In the case of a non-writer client, it can be handy to include in your contract a clause stating no changes are to be made to your final copy. Or, in the absence of a contract, at least include this in an email as one of your conditions prior to accepting a job. And it goes without saying that you must be your biggest critic when it comes to your work. Read through your copy numerous times, making sure it meets the brief, it makes sense and that there are no errors, neither spelling nor grammatical. After all, you can complain about others making negative changes to your work only if you produced top notch, error-free work to begin with.
I was in precisely this situation some while back and it still irks me to this day. To make matters worse, my client was a foreign language speaker yet still saw fit to make changes to my work. I mulled it around for days, which turned into weeks, but eventually chose to leave it. From a professional perspective, this was the wrong thing to do but I could not bring myself to confront my client. So how do we deal with situations like this?
Firstly, we must always remember that this is our professional reputation at stake. It is our livelihood and if we keep quiet when our work is messed with, it is us who will suffer, not those who were actually responsible for making our copy inferior. Unfortunately there are also industry professionals who meddle with copy, which, in my experience, have been overworked, stressed out sub-editors whose minds have not been completely on the task at hand. As a copy editor myself, I edit my own work before submitting it and, in my early days of freelancing, magazine editors did not make any changes to my copy. But this is certainly not the norm. Again, the responsibility is on us to read our published copy word-for-word and, if error-inducing changes have been made, notify the editor in writing.
While some editors send the final proof of a writer's work to the writer, many do not have the time to do so. In one instance, the final proof of my article was sent to me and the last letter of my surname had dropped off. So it happens all the time and we have to be proactive if we want to reduce such situations. Many freelancers draw up contracts before undertaking an assignment. It can be handy to include a clause which states the writer must have a chance to read through the final proof prior to publication. And in order to ensure the editor or publisher has sufficient time to do so, submit your copy well within your deadline. This shows you are doing everything in your power to help the editor meet your prerequisites. In the case of a non-writer client, it can be handy to include in your contract a clause stating no changes are to be made to your final copy. Or, in the absence of a contract, at least include this in an email as one of your conditions prior to accepting a job. And it goes without saying that you must be your biggest critic when it comes to your work. Read through your copy numerous times, making sure it meets the brief, it makes sense and that there are no errors, neither spelling nor grammatical. After all, you can complain about others making negative changes to your work only if you produced top notch, error-free work to begin with.