> Someone told me once that Michael Albert says editing copy is
> "authoritarian," so he shuns it.
Damn! There goes that argument.
I hope that most of us agree that good presentation is integral to effective communication. We like books that are edited and magazines that look attractive.
I come from these things from an art background. In art school alot of time was spent on presenting materials. If you were sloppy about your presentation, you'd get an earful from the teacher during critiques. As a chronic underachiever and lazy student, who was always busy with student activism, I always bore the brunt of my sloppiness during critiques.
My bad writing habits finally caught up with me in grad school. One day during my first semester in library school at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, my teacher for collection development decided to write examples on the chalkboard of bad writing from our recent assignment. He intended to keep the authors anonymous, but when it turned out that 2 out of the 4 examples were from my own writing, I foolishly decided to defend my writing. After that incident, I placed more importance in improving my writing.
Chuck0