Writing: Editing documents
by David Blakey
Some documents are prepared by people who do not know how to use word processors.
[Monday 2 August 2004]
During my work, I will discover a situation or I will find myself in a situation that inspires one of these articles. Usually, I do not refer to the situation that was the inspiration. This is because I hope that these articles make sense to you without my needing to explain the particular situation that inspired them. This article is an exception. I need to explain the situation that inspired it.
I have just reviewed an employment contract that was written by a law firm. Most consultants do this. A law firm writes a generic contract that aims to cover any event. A consultant reviews the contract for a specific purpose. Most consultants who do this will also know that many law firms have some unusual ways of using word processing. These quirks occur so often that I am now writing about them.
Causes
Many law firms seem to employ people who use a word processor as if it was a typewriter. Also, many law firm employees seem not to have read the manual about their word processor.
I know that the first of these used to be true. In the 1980s, when people switched from typewriters to word processors, they often took the habits of typewriting into word processing. Some word processors encouraged this. It is surprising that these habits still exist twenty years later.
I suspect that the second is true. People who perform word processing in law firms are often not properly trained in the applications that they use. They may not have copies of the manuals. They probably will not have paid time allocated for reading the manuals and practising the exercises in them. They will almost certainly not attend courses. Law firms still resist paying for training for their staff. Staff are expected to learn by doing or to learn by emulating.
Office staff in law firms are not chosen in the same way as support people in consulting. We choose people because of their skills with word processors, spreadsheets, databases and groupware, rather than because of their previous experience in consulting. Law firms tend to choose people because of their previous experience in law firms. As a result, their people may continue to lack skills in areas that we would regard as basic, such as word processing.
I have also observed that partners in law firms tend not to attend courses themselves, as they see this as beneath their dignity. One partner told me that he would never attend a public course on any subject, as there might be clients on the same course and these clients might think less of the partner for attending the course. As consultants, we freely admit that we are continually learning. Law firms appear to want to be seen as omniscient.
Effects
The effects of law firms' use of word processing would not matter to use if we did not have to make changes to documents prepared by them. Here are two examples of how their quirks cause us problems. They both occurred in the contract that I have just reviewed.
Tabs
On typewriters, you could set up physical tabs. So, you might set up a tab that was two inches right of the left edge of the text. You could then type headings within the two inches on the left and press the tab key to move over to type in the detail. For each new line of detail, the typewriter would continue to align the text on the tab. For each new heading, you would move to a new line, release the tab and repeat the process. You might encounter a heading that would be wider than two inches. If so, then you would type some of the heading into the two inch space, then press the tab key and continue to type in the detail until you reached the end of the line. Then you would release the tab, type in the rest of the heading, press the tab key and continue with the detail.
This same effect can be produced with word processors. You can enter part of a heading, indent, enter part of the detail, return, enter the rest of the heading, indent, and continue with the rest of the detail.
Position: Office manager
Resignation and Your engagement may be terminated at any Termination: time by either party giving at least two months notice.
This can be a nightmare to edit. The headings and detail are broken up and interwoven. Even if you only change the style of a normal paragraph to be a different font size or to use different line spacing, you can destroy the layout. See what happens when I increase the font size.
Position: Office manager
Resignation and Your engagement may be terminated at any Termination: time by either party giving at least two months notice.
Typewriters could not use tables. Word processors can, and a table is probably the best way to lay out these paragraphs.
Position: Office manager Resignation and Termination: Your engagement may be terminated at any time by either party giving at least two months notice.
The heading and detail are separate, and the formating is left to the word processor to handle.
I think that it is always a good move to introduce tables for this layout.
Numbering
If someone had never read the word processing manual and never been on a course, they might assume that only headings were numbered. Imagine this. They may not know how to introduce numbering so that the clauses of a contract can be numbered.
22. TERMINATION 22.1. ABC may dismiss you summarily and without prior notice if you: (a) commit any wilful breach or continued neglect of responsibilities;
They might make Termination
a Heading1 and add numbering to it, so the heading will be automatically numbered as 22.
Assume that they do not know how to number a clause below that heading so that it retains the automatic numbering. What would they do? What many law firms do is to give the clauses the Heading2 style. Then they give sub-clauses, such as clause (a) above, the Heading3 style.
Much of this has to do with tables of contents. They imagine that only headings will appear in a ToC, so that Termination
has to have a Heading style.
If you do not spot all this in the document, you might add a new heading somewhere in the document and find that it automatically acquires a number. Law firms that use Heading for numbering cannot use Heading for any other purposes, such as for real headings. So the real headings are usually in the Normal style, but bold and possibly with a larger font size.
That's the situation. Here's the problem. Do you try to tidy up the document before you pass it on to your client? And here's my answer. If you can tidy up the document, such as by putting headings and detail into a table, then you should do it. If you need to make major changes to the document, such as by changing the styling and table of contents, you should probably leave it alone. Replacing the tabs with a table will make the document look better, but changing the styles will probably not affect the way that the document looks.
This can make you look good, too. You can tell your client that you spent a little time tidying up to make the document look better, but that you have not spent any more time than is necessary. You can tell your client that you are aware of the strange styling within the document, and that tidying it up would have taken you a long time and with little obvious difference. Your client should see that you only spend your time on things that matter, that you are a pragmatiest, and that you do not run up your fees unnecessarily.
So, my advice is that you should not undertake work that only affects the function and not the result, and that you should always make sure that your client knows that you have made this decision.
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