Help! My editor really messed up

There can be a number of reasons for this:

• The download failed.
• The upload failed.
• Your editor did not have the right experience for the job.
• You uploaded the wrong document.
• Your editor uploaded the wrong document.
• Your expectations were out of sync with what Wordy does.
• Your brief was unclear, so what your editor thought you wanted was not what you wanted.
• Your text was impenetrable and your editor did a got job of turning it into readable prose even if the intended meaning has totally changed.
• Your editor was experiencing life: their cat got eaten by a shark, they just got diagnosed with cancer, their became a born-again Christian, …
• Your editor is an idiot.
• Whatever

So what do you do now?

First, don’t panic because we have plenty of other editors and we also offer a moneyback guarantee. Jobs can also be cancelled, which refunds your Wordy account, so you have several options.

Start by sending your editor a message. The main thing is to be specific. Don’t just tell them that they messed up. Tell them how they messed up. (“It is UK English but the brief says to use -ize endings in words like ‘criminalize’. Can you change it all back?”)

Then give your editor a chance to respond, either with a message or a new version of the edited document. They may have a valid reason for what they did. They may have misread the brief. Often you will find that this approach works well, and everyone lives happily ever after.

If your editor is being awkward or taking too long (taking into account time zones), you can ask for a re-edit, which forces the editor to respond. In terms of workflow, this transfers the job back to them, which means that you can’t cancel it until the editor responds. The editor can then respond by delivering the job again or by cancelling it. Your editor will cancel the job if they feel that they are no longer the right person for it. Editors don’t get paid for cancelled jobs, so they are generally reluctant to cancel. There’s advice on what to do if your editor cancels the job here. If it is cancelled to the queue, another editor will have the chance to claim it. However, note that the message dialogue may taint the job so that another editor will be unwilling to take a risk on it. If the job is cancelled to you, your Wordy account will be refunded. In that case, cancel the job yourself and create another job with the same document and brief, possibly revised in light of the original editor’s comments, if any.

If your job is urgent and your editor is taking too long to respond, then try the following. First, quickly review the document and the brief. Are they ok? If not, make some changes. Then, block the editor, and create a new job with the document and the brief. This means that another editor can work on your job. See how that goes. You may have to cancel one job later, ask for a re-edit or have to claim a refund because the same job has been done twice.

To claim based on the moneyback guarantee, send an email to support@wordy.com, preferably with a link to the job. Explain what went wrong and how you tried to get things resolved.

If you need more advice, feel free to get in touch.