RE: editorial suggestions

Hi Sarah,

(Separating the thread).

Sarah wrote:
>  On a side note, I feel bad about having taken up so much time at our last meeting and on the mailing list because of my editorial suggestions in the survey. I will resist providing that type of feedback in AGWG surveys moving forward.

I would rather we do gather this kind of input, it is useful. Whether it is best done in a survey or via another mechanism is a good question though.

It is up to the chairs (ahem, including me) to try and manage the meeting time to focus on the substantive points that need discussion. Sometimes it is quite difficult to separate though, editorial matters!


> Working group members regularly ask about engaging copyeditors and plain language experts, and often those suggestions are not taken up. Is there any way to provide suggestions outside of AGWG on the editorial aspects of the documents we review? Have we ever had a taskforce or team that focuses on copyediting our documents?

Essentially we need people to volunteer for that, and that has been the stumbling block.

More broadly though, I think that would create both:

  *   A never ending task for the copyeditors and,
  *   A bottleneck.

Perhaps a better strategy would be to do regular (short) training sessions in meetings to tackle the worst habits (that I know I have). If we work on the input rather than that output, it should scale better.

Kind regards,

-Alastair