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--- "Carnall, Jane" <Jane -dot- Carnall -at- compaq -dot- com> wrote:
>
> Unless I can persuade his project manager to convince him to give
> some more of his time to reviewing the document (which is unlikely,
> we're on a very tight deadline), I see no real alternative but to
> return the text in those sections to his original, unedited version:
> without his reviews, I can't be absolutely certain that the edits I
> made didn't change the meaning technically. (Some of his sentences
> were a little convoluted, and while I made the best determination of
> his meaning possible, there's always the possibility of error.)
> However, I'd like to do so with some pithy yet polite
> comment that suggests that my edits were *not* trivial, and his
> refusal to review has reduced the effectiveness of the documentation.
> Any offers?
Sorry, I'm all out of "pithy" at the moment. <g>
Actually, while I agree with your position that your edits may have
changed the technical meaning of your developer's prose, I don't agree
with your conclusion, that you need to revert the text back to his
original, warts and all. The disease, in this case, may be worse than
the cure. How do you know that his prose won't cause more problems than
your corrections? I suspect that even with errors you edits will
present a more technically accurate and useful document than his
earlier draft.
I think you need to go with your best understanding of the product and
processes involved. Any errors can be corrected in the next version,
and I would bet real money that there will be fewer corrections to your
text than to his.
You were hired to make the document better than it would otherwise have
been. If that's not what they wanted, they would have just gone with
his technical notes. If you can't get more review time, then you can't.
Go with what you have.
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