Would people want to read about editing? If it means reading lamentations about agonizing for eight hours trying to figure out where Chicago says to put the comma, I’m guessing not. But I work differently from many editors.

For example, unless the assignment directly involves a style manual, I regard Chicago and AP as suggestion books rather than bibles. It’s that simple. To many editors, that would be heresy. Here is the logic: The list of purposes for the English language is varied, vast, and inexhaustible. The purpose of writing is to communicate information to a given audience. Does a former gang leader write in all lower case? Besides utterly defying the style guides, won’t that limit the audience? It might, but the question I would ask is not whether the sacred style guidelines had been profaned. I would ask whether this method was effective in reaching the desired audience, and why.

You cannot imagine the crickets I have heard in this career when I have asked the basic question: “Who’s the intended audience?”

Take the aforementioned gangster book. I would ask the client why he (I refer here to an actual book I once read for pleasure, not an actual client) felt this style would best reach his audience–which, by the way, was exactly who? We’d talk about that. I’d hear out his case, consider it. If I disagreed, I’d explain why. We’d have a conversation. I’m the editor who might be receptive to subversive style methods if they were effective, so I’d have an open mind.

In such a case, it usually comes down to whether the major style variation is lazy or deliberate. If lazy, the short version is “I think my shitty is as good as others’ polished.” It has no aforethought, just “I don’t want to grow.” But if it’s deliberate, it’s written that way not because their basic ceiling is shitty, but because that reaches out to the intended audience in ways I might never understand if I’m not part of the target market. I have to be open to that.

That’s part of what makes me the Editorial Maverick, I guess.