{"id":577,"date":"2012-06-11T08:14:47","date_gmt":"2012-06-10T20:14:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.kiwistreet.co.nz\/wordpress\/?p=577"},"modified":"2012-06-11T08:14:47","modified_gmt":"2012-06-10T20:14:47","slug":"a-helping-hand","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.kiwistreet.co.nz\/wordpress\/?p=577","title":{"rendered":"A helping hand"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>A couple of years ago, one of my colleagues was hired by a research agency to help add a bit of clarity and style to their reports.<\/p>\n

\u2018I want our reports to be reports that our clients really<\/em> want to read,\u2019 the MD said.\u00a0 \u2018Every section.\u00a0 Every sentence.\u00a0 Every last word.\u2019<\/p>\n

The plan was for each research director to write his or her report as usual and then, once they were happy with the content, they were to send the report to my colleague for a vigorous polish.\u00a0 My colleague was to be given two clear days for each report.\u00a0 And the whole process was to be coordinated by an enthusiastic young woman who was the agency\u2019s in-house publisher.<\/p>\n

The first report sent for polishing was, my colleague says, gook of the very gobbledy-est kind.\u00a0 And, to make matters worse, he had only a day to turn it around.\u00a0 But he did his best.<\/p>\n

A couple of days later he called the MD.\u00a0 Had he seen the report?<\/p>\n

Yes he had.<\/p>\n

And was he happy with the result?<\/p>\n

After a long pause, the MD acknowledged that the structure was definitely an improvement.\u00a0 But the language still seemed, well, rather stilted.\u00a0 Also, he was surprised and disappointed by the number of typos.<\/p>\n

My colleague, too, was surprised.\u00a0 He thought he\u2019d done a pretty good job \u2013 especially considering the limited time.\u00a0 So he asked the MD if he would mind highlighting the bits that concerned him.\u00a0 \u2018It\u2019ll help us next time,\u2019 my colleague said.<\/p>\n

When the MD\u2019s file arrived, my colleague was perplexed to say the least.\u00a0 There were indeed typos.\u00a0 There were also misspellings.\u00a0 And, in places, there were some very strange sentence structures.\u00a0 Little wonder the MD had not been happy with the result.<\/p>\n

After much thought, my colleague decided there could be only one explanation.\u00a0 He called the in-house publisher and asked her if the original author had perhaps made a few last-minute amendments.<\/p>\n

No, she said, the research director in question had left for a conference in Amsterdam.\u00a0 He hadn\u2019t even seen the polished version.<\/p>\n

Then was it possible that someone else had made some last-minute changes?<\/p>\n

No, she assured him.\u00a0 No one had made any last-minute changes.\u00a0 The finished report was just as she had received it.\u00a0 \u2018Although I did have to fix some of your grammar and spelling,\u2019 she added.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A couple of years ago, one of my colleagues was hired by a research agency to help add a bit of clarity and style to their reports. \u2018I want our reports to be reports that our clients really want to … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[3,6,4],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kiwistreet.co.nz\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/577"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kiwistreet.co.nz\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kiwistreet.co.nz\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kiwistreet.co.nz\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kiwistreet.co.nz\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=577"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.kiwistreet.co.nz\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/577\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":579,"href":"https:\/\/www.kiwistreet.co.nz\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/577\/revisions\/579"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kiwistreet.co.nz\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=577"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kiwistreet.co.nz\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=577"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kiwistreet.co.nz\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=577"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}