Querying the Author: Some Examples

By Hilary Powers

Tipsheet from the January 16, 2001 forum on
Querying the Author: How To Do So Effectively

Getting the answer you want:

Text: In 1991, the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) implemented legislation that....
Reaction: Huh what? Who are they to pass laws? Instinctive query: Is legislation the word the NCAA really uses?
Final query: Could the preceding sentence say "regulations" rather than "legislation"? If the latter is the word NCAA uses, it should stay, but normally a nongovernmental body makes rules or regulations rather than laws.

Text: Stop right now and complete the Getting Results Assessment in Table 1.2.
Reaction: Who writes on a table?
Instinctive query: Why is this a table instead of a worksheet? [The book had lots of worksheets already.]
Final query: May we switch this table to a worksheet? It feels much more like the latter.

Providing a sensible alternative:

Text: Institutional change is as pervasive as it is rare.
Initial query (from another editor): That's contradictory. What do you mean?
Revision: Institutional change is as pervasive when it occurs as it is rare in the life of a society.
My query: Is preceding sentence OK? The original was so compressed that it could be read as contradicting itself -- "pervasive" can as easily mean "all the time" as "everywhere," and the former sense sits very strangely beside "rare." Please clarify if this isn't what you meant.

Text: Or as the old adage goes, "In God we trust, all others bring data."
Reaction: That's bogus.
Revision: Or (to update the old adage), "In God we trust, all others bring data."
Query: Is preceding sentence OK? The point is well taken, but the familiar adage is "In God we trust, all others pay cash."

Text: It is helpful to have a group discussion of the results after everyone has filled out the chart prior to a meeting.
Reaction: I just got whiplash following that one.
Revision: It is helpful to have everyone fill out the chart independently, then meet for a group discussion of the results.
Query: Do you like the preceding sentence? The point is easier to appreciate when the narrative moves through time only in one direction, rather than going back and forth as the original did here.

Taking as much space as you need:

Text: Remember that from the little acorn grows the mighty oak of a problem.
Reaction: Point and snicker.
Query: The acorn/oak metaphor brings with it a whole cloud of positive associations that seem out of place here. Could the sentence say something along the lines of "Remember that small problems are like shoots of crabgrass that can quickly grow and spread to engulf your organizational turf"? Or some other wholly negative metaphor -- a run in a stocking, a patch of mold on a stored fruit, a hairline crack in an airplane part -- to bring the meaning and the tone into synch.... Please mark up as needed.

Text: While each worker's individual contribution is very valuable, their ability to collaborate with others has a significant effect on organizational performance.
Revision: Although each worker's individual contribution is very valuable, the workers' ability to collaborate with each other has an even more significant effect on organizational performance.
Query: Is preceding sentence OK? By a twist of grammar, the original wound up with the contributions collaborating with each other rather than the workers. It also presented two conditions that were essentially equal ("very valuable" and "significant effect") in a structure that implied some substantial difference or tension between them.

Text: Without due diligence, managers can unknowingly erect performance barriers around any of the issues discussed in this book.
Revision: Without due care, managers can unknowingly erect performance barriers around any of the issues discussed in this book.
Query: Is "due care" OK in the preceding sentence? For many of the executives in your target audience, "due diligence" is a term of art that has to do with sniffing out the true state of a potential merger partner, and might be distracting here.

Refraining from explaining everything:

Text: All of these hurdles will not be found in every company (and there may be additional ones in your organization).
Revision: Not all of these hurdles will be found in any given company (and there may be additional ones in your organization), but it's important to know which ones you're dealing with.
Query: Is the addition acceptable in the preceding sentence? The point seemed worth stating rather than simply implying. [The linguistic twist that led the original to mean that no company would have any of the hurdles under discussion would have seemed snide to this author, so I left it out.]

Using AutoCorrect and AutoText:

Text: The same kinds of problems tend to crop up in manuscript after manuscript. When you come up with a really good explanation for something, let Word remember it for you. And if you find yourself using the same short phrase over and over again in different explanations, let Word do the typing for you. I use AutoText for long segments and AutoCorrect for short stuff; you can tell what's what on the following list because the AutoText items have names of four characters or more, to take advantage of Word's automatic completion facility. Here are some samples from the boilerplate library I've developed:

badname: This author's name is spelled differently in text and Reference section. Please fix as needed.
baddate: The only similar reference has a different date -- please adjust as needed.
inhyp: In this hypersensitive age, it's useful to avoid 3rd-person-singular pronouns where feasible so as to keep the reader's mind on the matter at hand and off linguistic development and gender politics....
hh: Even relatively neutral usages such as "his or her" can be distracting.
ip: Is preceding sentence OK?
ip2: Are the two preceding sentences OK?
nocite: There appears to be no citation to this source in the text. Please either insert one or delete the reference.
noref: The Reference section lacks an entry for this citation. Please supply.
qdate: Note query in text re date of this source.
reptqu: Note query re this source.
thp: the preceding sentence
th2: the two preceding sentences
thpa: the preceding paragraph

Copyright 2004, Hilary Powers.