Edited reports

I shop with many different MSPs. None provides me with a copy of my reports, after they edit them. Occasionally, an editor will contact me for clarification of something that I had clearly reported. It makes me wonder what happened to my report after I submitted it.

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This is why it is important to save a copy of your report before you submit it. If you look over these after an editor's request you will often find that you didn't specifically answer the question they are asking but relied on implication or conclusion you would expect from a "normal rational person" to answer the issue.

Let me give you an example. The question was "Did you see any signs or banners for XYZ?" Response "No" means I need to mention it in the narrative. The narrative reads, "At this location there were no signs or banners, the parking lot was clean and in good condition, and . . ." While one might conclude that there were no signs or banners for XYZ since I stated there were no signs or banners, I did not specifically answer for XYZ. It may feel extremely petty for an editor to come back and ask, "Did you see any signs or banners for XYZ?", but the point is that I didn't really address the XYZ question.

To save myself this kind of grief, I keep a Word window open while I do a questionnaire and when I hit a "No" when I will be answering in a narrative later, I specifically answer the question on my Word document. Then it is pretty straightforward to go tie my disjointed sentences together into a cohesive narrative that has specifically addressed each "No".
Who knows? You'll never see them after editing, and you won't know how they messed up your report for their own purposes. I've had impeccable reports that were criticized for supposed spelling and grammar errors, when actually the editors just don't understand any sentence with 2 or more clauses.
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