Track changes’ somewhat intimidating (or not) ‘sea of red ink’

The track changes tool in MS Word is a powerful ally that not only protects your original content but also allows an editor to make non-destructive recommendations.

It goes without say that authors put a huge amount of effort into writing up a manuscript. It is a time-consuming exercise, especially when several authors have worked on the research project.

The different views

The track changes tool gives authors four view options:

• Simple markup only shows the editor’s comments and recommendations
• All markup is the most comprehensive overview of the edits and includes all the revisions and comments
• No markup hides all the track changes and comments
• Original shows the pre-edit text.

It takes time to go through the all mark up view, because it requires a careful line-by-line reading of the text. This part of the editing process is very important, since an editor can inadvertently change a sentence’s emphasis or the author’s intended meaning.

The simple markup view is very useful when you want to see the editor’s comments and reply to the editor’s questions. Delete the comments that don’t require further action. I often use the no markup view to check the text for readability and word flow, and to check for errors that I may not have picked up.

How not to use track changes

I would like to highlight some issues that I have picked up in some manuscripts, especially those submitted by under-graduates:

• Accepting all changes without evaluating the editor’s comments or suggestions
• Rejecting most of the changes (by accident) and fail to correct critical errors
• Re-submitting a manuscript for another round of editing without accepting/rejecting the track changes from the first round of editing.

It is very important that authors retain personal oversight over their manuscript. I suspect that many of these errors occur due to time constraints and work pressure.

Key takeaway

Editing is a collaborative process, if anything is unclear, ask questions. Sometimes editors do make mistakes; more often you can benefit from the editor’s experience. The final version should always reflect your ‘voice’ and intention.