My biggest weakness in life is that I can’t force myself not to care about something. If it’s an interpersonal relationship, I have to fire the person because I cannot be around them and watch them do stupid shit. If it’s a job-related rule, whether related to personal conduct or the way that something is done, it has to be black and white with me, and it has to always be done that way. Otherwise I just go insane.
I am working on something that has already been edited by someone else, but for various reasons it is going through the system again. The document is rife with the first person. What I mean is that the words “I” and “my” are all over the place. The company I work for does not use the first person as a matter of practice.
It doesn’t matter to me whether the first person is used. I use it all the time. See? I just did. And I just did again! And I just did again! At any rate, because the company says no first person in written research, that’s the credo I follow when I am editing stuff for that company. So when I see something that was done by another editor and it has these types of elementary oversights in it, I get livid. The whole point of having a rule about something is to follow it, is it not?
There’s plenty of stuff out there that has gray areas, and that’s fine. But if you’re going to take the trouble to polarize something, don’t let it be something ceremonial. To keep with the subtle analogy, yes, maybe I am about to start World War III at work. We’ll see.
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