The column in the room

Writing people usually complain not so much about the difficulties of the process of creating a coherent text as on outside restrictions. That is, mainly editorial. Here, for example:

Excessively laconic style / It would be nice more in more detail;
many links / few links;
without examples, it is incomprehensible / Examples of unnecessary;
Again you, RM, wrote “as you know”, you know this, not the reader;
develop / reduce, and preferably both;
No need to write: NN - a well -known architect, everyone knows this already;
NN - And who is it? Explain;
It would be nice to give a picture / picture will not fit ...

And when I say that such bewilders in the TRV, as a rule, are quickly and conflictly resolved, former students and current colleagues express cautious distrust ...

I know that for an ordinary editor as an author-by no means a gift. And not because I am picky or - what would be much worse - arrogant. Rather, because I got used to a certain level of the density of the text, so that everything that could be reduced in my text, I myself have already reduced or replaced ...

However, this is still a simple situation. An attentive editor often solves a more difficult task than publish the AS IS text - for example, it seems to him appropriate to add a link, give Latin transcription of the surname, place a photo in B about lush resolution, etc. And the strip is already completely verified ...

It remains to “scatter” ... It is thanks to such editorial efforts that we read well -edited text as our own.

Sometimes it is better not to touch someone else's text at all - and not because his author has a difficult character or the author is not endowed with a linguistic instinct. Just the text can be shot down as an oak table - or is thinly worked out, like an old card table. We will leave it AS is. May the texts be such a motive in this collection of texts ...

So we will congratulate each other and thank ourselves for their zeal, and our readers - for the indifference ...

Rebekah Frumkin