Entry Level Encyclopedia

Minor edits are a daily fact of life for the fledging professional. Whether you have drafted a three sentence blurb to be sent to the client, a research brief, or even meeting minutes, minor edits are as unavoidable as discussing the weather in the elevator. Like many of the tasks you will be assigned as an entry level employee, minor edits are your superior’s equivalent method of justifying their use of the bathroom and first aid supplies. It is also a systematic technique of cultivating your dependence on managerial approval while slowly pillow-smothering your self-respect.

These so-called minor edits come in one of three basic forms: needless changes in punctuation and word choice, benign changes in sentence construction, or both. All types serve primarily to bolster your manager’s sense of self-importance. As a side note, you might recognize this practice from your college days when it was referred to as plagiarism.

In most cases of minor editing, your superior will judge their sense of self-importance more vital than preserving the integrity of your thought. In this event, minor edits may be undertaken in the name of concision. Unlike most minor edits which have no net impact whatsoever, these edits usually reduce your writing to a level commensurate with the abilities of a second-grader. Incidentally, this is also the perceived intelligence level of most clients, especially if their personal accomplishments exceed your manager’s.

Since minor edits are mostly informal, they usually take place over email and are highlighted in a different color of text. At first, this might seem like a well-intentioned effort to help improve your writing ability. This is hopelessly naïve. In reality, highlighting text to ensure color uniformity forces you to claim an inferior product as your own creation, an indignity not to be overlooked (see: ownership).