Get a Second Opinion First
You’ve got a deadline. You’re reviewing your work, and then you realize an important section begins with this*:
A California Court of Appeal recently interpreted the state’s Song-Beverly Credit Act to allow merchants to require extra personal identifying information from customers to be recorded on credit card slips when giving a customer credit for returned merchandise. The statute prohibits retailers from requiring customers to provide extra personal identification information, such as a driver’s license or Social Security Number, on credit card transaction slips, or using slips which have pre-printed spaces for such information.
Once you realize this, what do you do?
A. Read on and realize what comes next?
B. Read it again?
C. Edit it?
Here’s what you do. Knowing that you can’t serve as your own editor, go and find someone who has a few minutes to spare. Ask whether the beginning makes perfect sense, or whether it says this:
The court ruled that a statute allows what it prohibits!
Submit your work only AFTER YOU’RE SURE you wrote what you meant to write (and that’s obvious to others).
Else, people might think you don’t review your work.
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The quote is from this Memo To Clients by Walter Hansell.
