On 12 feb 2008, at 0:33, John Levine wrote: >> That's nonsense. You don't need a degree to use language. > Of course not, but I can tell you from experience having written quite > a few books that if you want a set of documents to have a consistent > readable style, we authors just can't do it. I think I write just > fine, but copy edits always, and I repeat ALWAYS, make the writing > more consistent and readable. The way I see it, it's not the job of an editor and certainly not a copy editor to rewrite significant amounts of text because the author has trouble expressing him/herself. Readability and a consistent style are the jobs of the author, with guidance from an editor, if any. Copy editors work at a lower level by flagging ambiguities and cleaning up rough patches in the author's command of the language. _______________________________________________ Ietf@xxxxxxxx http://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ietf