Clear, precise, and detailed instructions

A post for people who are tired of vagueness in professional settings

Hi Manuscript Workers,

When I was in graduate school, my best cohort buddy and I enrolled in a recreational ballet class for adults at our local community college. This was before barre fitness classes became widely available—we just thought it would be fun to learn some dance technique and hang out together on Saturday mornings.

After a few sessions, it was pretty clear that the instructor assigned to the course had no great passion for teaching ballet. One day, she asked the class to warm up by doing a combination of many steps which she seemed to come up with off the top of her head. She demonstrated the combination one time, then told us to do it ourselves. I couldn’t wrap my head around the sequence of steps after seeing it only once. I also didn’t realize that it was just a warm-up and that it didn’t really matter if we did it correctly or not. When I asked the instructor if she could break down the combination again for me, she snapped that it wasn’t important and it would be a waste of time.

I remember feeling so embarrassed in that moment. Not because I couldn’t learn the combination quickly, but because I had misread the situation and the instructor clearly thought I was silly for asking for help. This incident happened nearly twenty years ago, but I still think about it sometimes. It reminds me of how bad it can feel when we don’t know something we—or other people—think we should know. And how shameful we can feel when we are chastised for wanting things spelled out clearly.

In June of this year, I was fortunate to attend a session at the Association of University Presses annual conference where the speaker (Emily Banks of Enna) talked about the communication preferences of neurodiverse employees. She mentioned that some autistic people thrive with “clear, precise and detailed instructions.” While I don’t identify as autistic, what she said resonated with me. I had an immediate feeling of recognition that yes, this is how I need professional expectations to be communicated. Don’t make me guess at how to be successful in completing the task you want me to do. Just tell me what I need to do to fulfill your expectations, and if you can break down how you want me to do it, step by step, so much the better. I now look back on many of the painful, cringeworthy moments of my academic career and realize that in many cases, it wasn’t that I (or anyone else) did anything wrong, I just didn’t realize what I was supposed to be doing and therefore didn’t do it to others’ satisfaction.

If you’ve spent any time in academic professional settings, you know that this kind of clear communication can be pretty rare. Let’s set aside situations in which people are actively trying to gatekeep and exclude (which does happen, unfortunately). Even assuming that people have the best intentions, it takes time and effort to spell out how systems work and how to be successful at navigating them. While some individuals and institutions make a point to decode this hidden curriculum for others, there’s often little material reward associated with doing so and plenty of factors to disincentivize it (e.g. a shit ton of other work on your plate that leaves you little time to do the work of systematizing and disseminating practical knowledge).

Scholarly publishing is a prime example here, of course. It’s why I’ve created workshops, courses, and even a book that breaks down, step by step, what scholars need to do to get their research published. Seeing a couple example book proposals and getting piecemeal advice from advisors and friends is great, but it isn’t enough for everyone. Especially not for people who thrive with “clear, precise, and detailed instructions.”

Over the past few years, I’ve realized there’s a need for this kind of systematized knowledge-sharing on the other side of the table too. Editors and others who give feedback to scholarly writers also aren’t getting adequate training in how to do that work effectively.

In July, I recorded a free masterclass on how to edit scholarly texts like a pro. In the audience were hundreds of freelance editors, editors who work at journals and book publishers, and scholars who advise graduate students. When I asked attendees to raise their hands if the way they learned how to edit was to imitate what their own mentors had done when they submitted their work for feedback, a majority of their hands went up.

I wasn’t surprised by this at all. Both academia and publishing are famously considered “apprenticeship” professions, meaning that what “training” there is is often essentially about observing what your mentors do and then either trying to do it as well as they do or trying to improve on their methods through trial and error. Do our mentors ever take the time to write down their methods and walk you through them in a systematic way? Well, maybe some do. But I think most don’t. And again, I don’t necessarily blame them — they have a lot of other stuff going on. Plus it can be hard to derive a systematic explanation for how you work when you’re also just going on habits and whatever you observed your mentors do, with some haphazard adjustments along the way, not all of them even consciously adopted.

But my brain, with its love of “clear, precise, and detailed instructions,” can’t accept this as good enough. Certainly not good enough in a profession where we hold other scholars’ work in our hands and can do real damage if we don’t know how to be supportive and effective when we try to help them improve it. This is what drove me to create Developmental Editing for Academics, an online course that offers a systematic method for assessing scholarly manuscripts and giving practical feedback that actually helps writers move forward with getting published.

My approach in the course isn’t to say “this is the only way to be a good editor and you should be ashamed if you don’t do it this way.” Instead, the course is a distillation of over a decade of professional editing experience working with academic authors. I break my methods down so you can see precisely how I proceed through an editing job and what I think is important to consider each step of the way. I present what I do as a one potential system you can follow, with plenty of opportunities to adjust it to your own needs and circumstances as you see fit. And I don’t only talk about working with the text in a technical way—I talk about the whole picture of editing scholarly manuscripts, including author-editor relationships and running a sustainable editorial business (if that’s what you want to do).

If any of this sounds helpful for you, please check out the course here. It’s a self-paced curriculum, so you can complete the course at any time. Assignments are included, but they’re optional and you can pick and choose which ones you want to try on your own. Enrollment will be closing on September 30th, 2023, but as long as you’re signed up by then, you’ll keep indefinite access to all the course materials.

I will be holding a live Q&A session on Wednesday, September 27th at 10am Pacific to give enrollees the chance to meet me and other participants in the course. You’ll be able to ask any questions on your mind about scholarly editing or running an editorial business. If you’d like to attend that session, you’ll need to enroll in the course before the 27th (you’ll find the Zoom link inside the course once you enroll).

If you can’t attend live, no worries—the recording will be posted inside the course after the fact. And if any questions come up later as you work through the course material, you’ll be able to post them in the course platform and I’ll respond directly.

I’m hoping to offer the course again in some form in 2024, but the plans are not set yet. So if this is something you’re interested in doing in the next several months, now would be the time.

Questions about Developmental Editing for Academics? Reply to this email. The more you tell me about your situation and why you might be interested in the course, the better I’ll be able to advise as to whether it’s a good fit for you. Looking forward to hearing from you soon!