Katharine O'Moore-Klopf, ELS
Most editing jobs are routine. This one made me cry. It wasn’t a campaign deck. It wasn’t a case study. It wasn’t even “work,” not in the usual sense. It was a leave request. A working mom was… | Dave Baker | 12 comments
Most editing jobs are routine. This one made me cry. It wasn’t a campaign deck. It wasn’t a case study. It wasn’t even “work,” not in the usual sense. It was a leave request. A working mom was asking her employer for time off to care for aging parents. On the surface, it looked routine: professional language, proper formatting, all the corporate politeness you’d expect. But within those paragraphs was the story of someone stretched to the breaking point. You could feel the exhaustion hiding in her polite phrasing, the guilt bleeding through the word “request,” the love wrapped around every careful sentence. I had to stop halfway through. My eyes blurred. What I was reading was someone’s plea disguised as paperwork. Editing isn’t moving commas around. We’re the caretakers of voices, the guardians of someone’s truth. Most days, I’m proofreading marketing content, reports, and proposals. But the principle is always the same: Behind every document is a person. A story. A reputation hanging in the balance. Dreams tucked into bullet points. That performance review you’re polishing? Someone’s career trajectory rides on those words. That client proposal you’re tightening? A whole team’s next six months of work depends on getting it right. That company announcement you’re “softening”? Real families are waiting on that news. The leave request taught me something I’ll never forget: Sometimes the words we touch aren’t just carrying ideas. They’re carrying people. And when someone trusts you with their story, you’re holding something sacred. -- Note: The letter in the image is a recreated, anonymized version of a real document I edited years ago. The client and I remain close, and I ran this post by her for approval before sharing. I would never publish a client’s personal content without consent. | 12 comments on LinkedIn
Peter Downey
Mx Verda
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Ely Writers
Dailingual