A legal secretary won’t tell a lawyer his handwriting is worse than her second-grader’s. She won’t point out that his editing marks resemble the nonsense symbols a cartoonist uses in place of swear words. And she won’t mention that swearing is exactly what his handling of the revision process makes her want to do.

Clarity and a systematic, cooperative approach are key to turning out quality documents. The substantive revision phase comes first, then format changes and finally, proofreading.