@cordener wrote:
I would reply, because I never, ever ignore an e-mail from an editor, and tell her honestly what I saw.
Nobody's suggesting to ignore the editor!
But if you try to answer a question you didn't need to (thus wasting your time), I can see a situation going from merely inconvenient to bad. You don't have the answer the editor's looking for, because you didn't need to make that observation. If you try to be accommodating and
don't point out that the information isn't required, the editor is likely to think he/she is justified in asking the question. The shopper is then the one who's made the mistake, in the editor's eyes. So, say your shop gets rejected or you get marked down significantly for it. That's not the time to address the original problem. It's easier and less time consuming to fix a problem upfront than it is to fix it later. Editors make mistakes, the same as shoppers do. They tell us when we've made one; what's the problem with telling them, in a professional (even if not nice) way that they've made one?
You can be polite and professional and still let the editor know that he/she is asking something you didn't need to address in your report. Nothing wrong with that. You don't have to kiss the editor's posterior by putting yourself in the impossible position of trying to answer a question that you don't really have an answer for.
I learn something new every day, but not everyday!
I've learned to never trust spell-check or my phone's auto-fill feature.