The most humiliating note I've ever received, and some of yours, too

Recently, an editor left a comment in a Google doc teaching me how to make an em-dash. It was attached to my usual "--" which I've used in countless rough drafts during my time as a freelance writer. I have no excuses for why I never learned how to produce the far more handsome "—," it's just one of my longstanding weirdo typographic tics that I've never purged. This has been a problem for a long time; I've opened countless docs after an editor's first pass to witness how they've painstakingly beautified every one of my garish --'s, and I guess some part of me believed that this was the proofreading process at work. An editor is responsible for fixing my stupid typos, distilling my nodulous sentences, evaluating the strengths of weaknesses of the reporting, and of course, adding in all the em-dashes that I myself failed to administer.

"Been meaning to mention this for a while," began the note, before laying out the exact keystrokes necessary to render the "—" on a Mac. (For the record, it is option, shift, minus key. I still do not know how to do it on a PC, so my curse continues unabated.)

There is something uniquely humbling about an editor resorting to, like, elementary-level computer grammar instruction to make you a better writer. To think I was always seconds away from just Googling the solution! I could've avoided the months of silent resentment, as my poor bosses discovered, once again, that my copy doubled as a tedious scavenger hunt for stray "--s." But that is also the beauty of a humiliating note. Ideally, it should offer a kaleidoscopic recalibration of the many things you are doing wrong, as all of the panache you've accumulated is reset back down to zero. "And at once I knew I was not magnificent" — Justin Vernon, "Holocene." 

I reached out to some people I know about their own all-time editing gut-punch. Their answers are below. Those of you who are faint of heart should tread carefully. We are about to enter a world of flubbed last names, intra-sentence adjective redundancy, and editor emails that start with, "Okay, pull up a chair."

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"I pride myself on not taking edits personally, so it’s hard to think of a gaffe that causes cold sweats and a need to go off the grid never to be seen again. There is one that haunts me, though. Once an editor told me, 'You have some of the best typos.' Now I love nothing more than a compliment and, as an Aquarius, I love to stand out. But typos are certainly not something to be proud of. So I took this unintentional backhanded compliment as a reason to be a more diligent copy editor. I’ll take solace in knowing that if I mess up my copy, at least that editor was laughing. My impact!" — Joseph Longo.

"I’m extremely neurotic and always convinced my editors will hate whatever I put in front of them, so it’s a relief that they almost never do. That sounds like a brag, and maybe it is a brag, whatever, I’m good at stuff. That’s not to say I don’t like, get edits back, because obviously I do, but they’re usually like 'Here’s how we make this stronger,' not like, 'I hate this so much, what is wrong with you, do you even know how to read.'"

"One time, though, I wrote a narrative lede I was pretty proud of and listened to my editor fully tear it apart. He didn’t send me a new draft or anything like that; he called me over to his desk and had me sit there as he went line by line and explained how I had fucked up. 'A narrative lede can work if it’s well-written,' he said. 'This is not.' He didn’t tell me how to make it better or anything, he was just like, thanks, this is shit. It didn’t end there. All in all, I sat there for an hour and a half and let my boss berate me because what the hell else was I supposed to do? At one point I said I’d be right back because I had to pee, and I went to the bathroom and cried and rinsed my face with cold water and hoped my eyes weren’t too puffy. It was extremely embarrassing. More embarrassing still, the piece ran with my original lede, which was honestly fine." — Gaby Del Valle.

"Back when tech writing seemed like mostly harmless fun — 2013 or so — I was writing about some app or company and let my enthusiasm get the better of me. The Verge always drilled into us that our writing should not sound like marketing copy, but on this day I had utterly failed. My editor, Dieter Bohn, gave it a read and just said, 'This reads a little too in-flight magazine,' and there was no denying the truth of it. His words have haunted me to this very day." — Casey Newton.

"One time an editor cut some joke I made about my life and said, 'I think the readers know enough about the mythology of Kaitlyn,' which I think about a lot." — Kaitlyn Tiffany.

"In the video game Metro Exodus there's a character called Idiot who's pretty obviously designed with Dostoevsky's The Idiot in mind. I pitched something about that to one or two places, and while the editors liked the idea, they said it was a bit too academic and they were concerned it would be difficult to parse. After a couple of rejections I thought, 'Hey I have a first class Honours degree in English literature, maybe I should mention that so people know that I can hold my own here.' I mentioned that in the next pitch and then this came back: 'Don't wave your qualifications around like an umbrella. I got a double first from Balliol in English and I don't advertise it, my actual intelligence does that for me. This pitch needs focus.' 

"Bear in mind, this is a guy who's currently sitting on three of my unpublished drafts." — Cian Maher.

"The most gutting note I’ve received from an editor so far was 'This reads like a PR bio.' It stung because my editor was totally right. I was frustrated by some less-than-successful interviews to the point that I totally lost the focus of the story: the subject and his music. Instead I pumped out some vague drivel about the subject’s upward career trajectory, truly useless stuff that could have been said about any musician. If it had been for a bio, the client would have asked for their money back. Luckily after many more edits we were able to sculpt the story into something readable." — Jack Riedy.

"The year was 2017. I was only about a year and a half into my career as an online journalist, and I had landed an interview with someone who plays a video game professionally — someone I was a big fan of. In the year-ish since starting as a writer, I had mostly been looped into writing quick news hits about games, cosplayers, and community events, and I was really excited to dive into an interview with someone I actually admired and respected. After the interview itself, I wanted to make sure I got the piece just right. After several hours of research into the pro player's past, their stats, their former teammates, and more, I moved onto transcribing and writing the story, which took several attempts before I was satisfied. In total, it took about 12 hours of actual work before I was comfortable submitting it for review. My editor told me that it was 'editorialized garbage' and that I 'clearly just threw some words together to add some money to an invoice' instead of 'creating a coherent story.' Editors: There are a thousand ways to tell me my story sucks — please don't pick that one." — Aaron Mickunas.

"I was profiling the band Mercury Rev for a popular pop culture website about five or six years ago. I loved Mercury Rev and got the idea that a few of the site's editors did too, so the piece was perhaps a bit fawning. The embarrassing note was appended to the kicker, where I quoted one of the members using a play on words that referenced the title of the album they were about to release. The editor HATED that kicker, and as a result, decided that the piece seemed 'approved' by the band, as if we had collaborated together on it, like a PR agent would do for a press release. In retrospect, that kicker was a bad idea, and I would never end a piece like that. Perhaps I fell under the spell of the band a bit, and there were personal repercussions for me as a result. It soured me on the site, which was a place I had contributed to for years and read for even longer, made me doubt myself as a music writer, and even ruined the band for me for a couple years. It felt embarrassing, like I'd lost my edge or something. In retrospect, the editor was correct. But as freelancers, we don't always get the kind of bedside manner that staff writers do." — Chris O'Connell

“One time I was writing about this very cool artist couple and my editor told me it sounded too much like I had a crush on them. I did though.” — Rebecca Jennings