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7. Getting on with clients

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My former hairdresser was complaining that new young hairdressers often have no idea how to communicate with their clients – ‘client relations’ isn’t taught in their courses, and they apparently don’t learn these basic human skills at home. The result is that she won’t take on an apprentice. She feels she can’t be there every minute of the day to supervise and to make sure that apprentices have the communication skills to provide the niceties that her clients expect. What’s it like in other trades and professions?

In the editing profession, we have to deal with clients all the time, and it isn’t just a matter of dealing with text – it includes dealing with people, of all ages and all walks of life and all levels of education. This chat is addressed directly to new editors.

You’ve got your first client – what next? Much has been written about client relations, and the late Janet Mackenzie’s book The editor’s companion, second edition, is a good place to start learning about some of the more technical aspects, including contracts – you do have a written agreement with your client, don’t you?

Here are a few of the strategies for getting on with clients that have helped me over the years and that seem to have paid off – you’ll develop your own, but here are my ‘starter’ thoughts.

Listen

Listening to what your client wants or needs is important in any business relationship. Your client may have no idea at all about editing, or may know a lot, or anything in between. Nevertheless, listen patiently and don’t be judgemental in your response. The client comes first – try to formulate your response based on what the client is telling you. For example, they may say ‘It needs a quick check for spelling and grammar, and that’s all’, but your assessment of the manuscript shows that it needs a restructure as well if it’s going to be an interesting and logically formulated piece of writing. You will need to agree with the client about the spelling and grammar and ease gently into the need for restructuring. Or they may say ‘I need help with the things I get wrong because my native language is “x” – can you show me how to fix this?’ If you know the ins and outs of ‘first language interference’ and their effect 25 on written English, you can use comment notes in Track Changes or, better, face-to-face consultations, to teach the client how to overcome whatever the problem is (for example, lack of appropriate articles – the, a, an) and suggest they try to fix the omissions themselves before the edit starts.

Keep in touch

Keep the client informed on a regular basis during a long job. Develop a practice of reporting to the client every week at least. Clients tend to get edgy if they don’t have contact with their editor at predictable intervals.

This practice of keeping in touch has a side benefit – it helps to keep you organised. As you plan the project, it helps to know that a particular day of the week is the day for reporting to a particular client. You can organise your work so that you will have something to report – keeping you on the ball and keeping the client happy, knowing that you’re beavering away.

Use plain English

Don’t use technical jargon when explaining editing recommendations to a client – you could only confuse them. Even a client who is in the same line of business appreciates explanations in plain terms. For example, if you have to recommend cutting down sentence length by making new sentences of subordinate clauses, try showing the client the main ‘sentence’ (without using the term ‘main or independent clause’), and then show them how the other string of words can be turned into a proper sentence – making two easy-to-read shorter sentences to replace the one complex and wordy sentence. Your client may be confused if you talk glibly about independent and subordinate clauses. They will appreciate simpler terminology, and may actually ask for more help as a result.

Smile!

Yes, even when you write to your client. Try to look and sound relaxed, enjoying the job, keen to get the client’s message across to the target audience.

Your personality and attitude can shine through even in a phone call. I once heard a client say to their editor, whom they’d never met, ‘You must be very beautiful – you are so caring over the phone’. The editor wasn’t physically 26 beautiful, but her voice gave that impression, and this was the important thing for the client. How do you do that? Literally put a smile on your face while you write or talk to your client – it will show!

Don’t assume

Don’t read into an email request from a stranger anything that isn’t there. We all make mistakes. We spot a typo in the email and assume that this represents the standard of writing in the document we are being asked to edit, though we haven’t yet seen the document. We see a particular type of grammatical error a couple of times in the sample sent for assessment and assume that this means an overall culture-specific writing problem that will require quite a lot of time to fix in the edit. This is not fair. Don’t jump to conclusions.

Equally, don’t assume a role for yourself as editor that is not yours to assume. Once a book of mine was edited by someone who thought he liked certain words and grammatical structures better than mine, so changed a lot of mine to suit his preference. Unfortunately, the grammatical structures were wrong and the choice of words put a totally different, and rather pompous, tone on the book. The publisher dealt with the matter by having me fly to another city to sort it out with the editor. Stick to being an editor, perhaps with some added help in indexing, design and even English grammar tuition if you feel up to it. But remember it’s the client’s work – not yours.

Be patient

Rome wasn’t built in a day, they say. And a book wasn’t put together in a day either. As the author of a number of books, I have been in awe of the patience of my various editors on most occasions. The editor of the first edition of this volume, for instance, Ara Nalbandian, was patience personified as he gradually winkled out of me what he needed to make the book’s structure work for you, the reader – a structure retained for this revised edition. For my part, I have learnt to be patient with clients too, particularly the students who write PhD theses and whose entire careers depend on how well their thesis is received by their examiners. Many of them have never learnt English grammar thoroughly; many of them have heaps to say about their topic but it tumbles out in a verbal roller-coaster; most of them have never had to write anything as long as a PhD thesis and find the whole thing daunting. Helping students through this trying time for them, and making sure that the work 27 remains theirs, with no hint of my help visible, is a really enjoyable challenge. It certainly requires patience.

Finally, be honest

Say what you can do and don’t pretend to be more clever than you are. As a new editor, you can’t expect to have accumulated the wisdom of years of experience – it will come. Know what your limitations are and acknowledge them. Any editor ought to be able to undertake most of the general copyediting requirements as set out in the Australian standards for editing practice, but not necessarily all the specialised aspects of it. If you need help, seek it from an experienced editor. Likewise, if you need help in preparing a quote for editing, or anything else to do with the business of editing, there are people in the associations of editors around Australia ready and willing to help. You are not alone.

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You’re on your way in the editing arena – enjoy your relationship with your clients!