The Emperor’s New Clothes*—or, The smartest thing ever said to me by a client. And I do mean “ever”

"QUESTION: Is this term used commonly in this particular field?"

I've asked this question often over the years. Lazy of me? Not necessarily. Yes, of course I could just research the term and answer the question myself. But why have my client pay me to do that when I can just ask? It's quicker. It's cheaper (for the client). And being desperate to impress isn't part of the mandate.

So, I ask this question of a young PhD candidate while editing the usual three papers.

And he answers, "Well, I see it written a lot, but that doesn't mean it's right."

And that is the smartest thing ever said to me by a client. And I do mean "ever."

Most of us are guilty of repeating formulations that we've heard or read, and without ever giving them any real consideration. That's understandable. After all, most of us spent the first few years of our lives doing precisely that (and some of us never quite kick that habit). But what if the source we're mimicking—because mimicry it is—is wrong?

For example, I'm often asked to edit biographical notes for authors and speakers. And there are individuals whose bio notes are almost exercises in stream of consciousness writing that Joyce or Beckett would be proud of, with punctuation that could grace some of the more psychedelic passages in the novels of Alfred Bester. But one finds these same bio notes distributed and redistributed across the internet because no one has ever dared face down the risk involved in telling the Emperor* (or Empress) that he (or she) "has no clothes."

Just a few years ago I was involved in a long, intense discussion with an author regarding one particular term, which the author felt extremely strongly should not be changed as it had appeared in a seminal paper on the subject. When we went back and checked that seminal paper, it turned out that the term was a typo.

Orwell wrote, in Politics and the English Language, "Never use a metaphor, simile or other figure of speech which you are used to seeing in print." This "rule" is useful for a number of reasons. One (almost certainly unintended one) being that even if you "see it written a lot," that "doesn’t mean it's right."

But this isn't a post about Orwell, or about authors' and speakers' biographical notes. It is me doffing my cap to that young PhD candidate who knew that something can appear a million times on the internet and still be wrong. And that one can always put it right if one cares.

* Note: The Emperor’s New Clothes is a folktale by Danish author Hans Christian Anderson first published in 1837. The tale tells of two crooks posing as tailors who offer to supply the Emperor with a magnificent suit of clothes that is invisible to the foolish. He takes them up on their offer, and even though he himself and all his entourage can see that this "suit of clothes" does not really exist, no one says so. No one, after all, wishes to be thought a fool.

The Emperor eventually parades his new "clothes" before the entire population. Until, finally, a small child shouts out that the Emperor is, in fact, wearing nothing at all.

[Illustration by Vilhelm Pedersen, Hans Christian Andersen's first illustrator, with thanks to Wikimedia.]