I’m full of sympathy, but also understand both sides.

Just a fortnight ago, some work which a client commissioned from be before going on holidays was sent to an external editor. She trashed the work, said that I didn’t conform to the house style (there’s no style guide — it exists in her head) and suggested that she should write the other half of the job.

My contact returned from her holiday and asked the editor if she had seen the brief I was working to. The editor hadn’t. My contact resigned — it was the last straw. It felt great that she had my back, but I still feel bad about the job.

When I searched for more information about the editor, there is nothing. She has no profile, not even her own website, and isn’t a member of IPEd. She’s just a bad editor who has talked her way into a good gig. She obviously didn’t look me up or she’d see that I too am an editor, and know what’s expected of the role.

I’m angry about it, but they paid me and it doesn’t have my name on it, so it’s time to move on.

On the flipside, I’ve edited work to be published under someone else’s name and had to make significant changes quickly ahead of publication deadline — in a weekly news format, doing that is often necessary — without their approval. But in anything slower, like a monthly publication or the books I’ve edited, or even if there’s just a bit of time before deadline, it’s essential to go back to the writer.

Even when I do a structural edit — where the edit is intended to improve the writing — I always send it back with the changes tracked. (Have you ever had to do a doc compare on 60,000 words because you forgot to Track Changes? I won’t make that mistake twice). I’m sure the clients see those files, have a quick glance at them then click Accept All Changes without reading the copy. But at least they have the opportunity.

You have some recourse, but be careful of using it. There are writers who are famous for getting on the phone to shout at newspaper subeditors who changed their work — “You deleted that word, that beautiful word! Never change my work again.” It always backfires a few months later when the subeditor lets some terrible gaffe go through to publication.

You were done a disservice by an editor who was probably under pressures that we don’t know about. It sucks, but you look like you know what you’re doing in the writing world — I think people will judge your body of work above one discourteously edited essay.