The Conversation

Last week I was coerced into writing an article for The Conversation.

The new business editor and I didn’t exactly see eye to eye, so it was trench warfare with respect to the content of the article.

I would change it. She’d change it back. And I would change it again.

Consequently the article became an abomination put together by a committee of two.

At one stage she emailed me to say:

“Just something I noticed while you’re editing, we try and steer clear of writing in the first person. So instead of say writing it as an advice style perhaps we can just weigh up the two arguments?”

And just that day I had read an article in The Conversation (http://bit.ly/1ZC15iE) which was all about good writing. It espoused offering personal opinions and not using the passive voice. Oh I enjoyed emailing that link.

Anyway, due to the battle of content and wills neither of us bothered to edit the thing for grammar (which I usually leave until the end) or typos (of which there were many, given that it was written on this phone using Swype – an approximator of what you mean to type, at best).

At least 90% of the comments were about the typos. Outrage expressed, in fact.

At least now I know how to get the attention of your average academic.