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> While I may also have an inflated view of my skills and knowledge, it
> wouldn't occur to me to offer an unsolicited opinion on someone else's
> writing skills - particularly not on a public forum. Anyhow, my point
> is that this made me curious about how most techwhirlers view their
> skills and abilities."
Well, I agree with other comments on the polls that I would need to break my skills down into various areas. I'll not go into to that so much because others are covering the subject quite skillfully already.
Along the lines of the anonymous comment above though, I felt I must reply. I do think very highly of my editing skills, because I do have test results as well as non-emphirical evidence such as feedback from friends and collegues.
That said, it was not my view of my skills and knowledge, inflated or otherwise, that lead me to offer an unsolicited edit (not an opinion so much as a critique of a sentence) on the list. It was an egregious mistake in judgement, for which I apologized off-list to Lisa.
I am not aware if the author of the sentence which I critiqued is on-list or not, as I didn't read the beginning of the thread and was not even sure where the sentence came from, although it seemed to be attributed to an already published article in the STC journal rather than an email. I thought that the thread had to do with puzzling out the meaning from the sentences of an already edited and published article.
I view my skills highly, but I don't believe that unsolicited edits are proper on- or off-list, and in fact, don't edit my co-workers, bosses, friends, or family members unless asked.
(However, many, do indeed, ask. And they like it! So there!)
However, I will be sure to be extra cautious in the future about chiming in on any threads on techwr-l that appear to be editing any writing of any kind, unless I am clearly solitcited to do so.
______________________
Rose A. Wilcox
Senior Technical Writer
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480-580-0530 (cell)
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