> If I may step out of the bikeshed for a moment, the editing part is > much harder than using whatever software checks in the edits. > My wife has a steady side job editing (or often rewriting) theses for > foreign graduate students. These students are plenty smart, and they > know their topic, but they are mostly from east Asia and their English > grammar is not good. > Editing these is a lot of work, and invariably requires multiple > passes to go back and ask what they meant and rewrite the parts that > need it. This is something that IETFers with good English can do, but > it's significant work, and the final document is different enough from > the original that Word-style diff marks would only tell you that a > whole lot has changed. +100 This is exactly what I was trying to say; John just said it better than I did. Editing someone else's work competently means seeing things from their perspective, at least to some extent. This is difficult even with someone you know well; with someone you don't know well and from a different culture it's really quite difficult and takes a *lot* of time. When I start a serious editing pass on a document I usually start by reading it several times, carefully, from beginning to end. (If I'm already familiar with the document I read it backwards to try and prevent my eyes from sliding over issues.) I then wait at least a day, sometimes two, then read it again. Only then will I start to edit. Sometimes the toolset really is critical; in this case it's a niggle. In fact I'll go so far as to say that if you think the editing part is simple and easy you're not doing it right. Ned