When Illumination Said My Work Had 83 Errors

Pissed off doesn’t quite cover it — I was insulted. The piece was perfect.

Soon after I started writing on Medium, I submitted an article about a walled garden to Illumination, and was promptly told it had 83 errors and the pictures were not allowed because they contained people.

The piece was perfect. It had previously been published in a British gardening magazine, who paid me £240 to write it. Frankly, I was insulted and appalled. It didn’t have any errors. I wondered what she was talking about.

The editor of Illumination had taken it upon herself to delete two photos — one supplied by the garden’s owners, and one of my interviewee. Charming.

She’d already created work for me by deleting the pics, so I decided to play along and see what her software said needed changing.

Software from Hell

She told me that Pro-Writing Aid is ‘better than Grammarly’ and I should run it through that. So I did. It quickly became clear that they were using software to do their editing and leaving their brains at the door. I also have a suspicion that English isn’t the editor’s first language, which probably compounds the problem.

The software ‘suggested’ that my article should be changed from passive voice to active voice. There were NOT ‘83 errors’. There were 83 suggestions. It wanted me to change ‘the manor was requisitioned by the war ministry,’ to ‘the war ministry requisitioned the manor,’ for example.

It was pedantic, yes; annoying, definitely. Did I do it? Yes! No other publications had let me into their ranks at the time, and I wanted the audience.

I wished I hadn’t bothered

Reworking the article took ages, and I later wished I hadn’t bothered. It got five reads. Illumination obviously wasn’t the right publication for the story. I wish they’d told me that!

The software also suggested some changes that would have introduced unacceptable errors, and created paragraphs that simply didn’t make sense. For this reason, I deleted some paragraphs altogether. The software’s suggestions were stupid, wrong, and totally unacceptable.

I offered a compromise, but the editor rejected it. She wanted something approaching 100% compliance with the software, which included deleting the apostrophe in “the garden’s opening times”. That phrase needs an apostrophe, but the software flagged it, so I had to introduce a real error just to get my piece approved.

I later went back and deleted the sentence because having that irritating, small but stupid cock-up attributed to me, was annoying.

After that experience, Illumination continued to introduce errors to my other stories. For example, when I sent them a piece on Covid restrictions ending, they changed, ‘and that’s why’ to ‘so’. But they didn’t read the whole sentence. By using software instead of their brains, they’d created a mistake. I noticed a day or so later, and fixed the problem.

For a long while, I decided to only send them short articles, written in active voice. Then I’d check for errors after they’d published, as the software still made some weird suggestions, and they’d change it without telling me.

Update on the situation

Since originally publishing this article, the situation has much improved. I’ve sent them longer pieces and they’ve been fine. I think the problem boiled down to that one editor, who’s now gone.

If you know you’re a competent writer, with a good command of English, don’t take this shit from any editors — look for other publications.

At the time of writing, I’ve not come across this with any other Medium publications — although I’ve since heard similar stories. I’ve never come across it in ten years working professionally in the publishing industry either! It’s quite surreal!

Why now?

I decided to publish this article now, rather than when it happened, because at the time I was nervous about creating waves. I was new. I didn’t want to be kicked out of Illumination!

But a piece by Tasneem H Yousuff below, raised similar issues, and I totally agree. These programs can suck the life out of your writing!

I felt a sense of solidarity, so decided to share my story, which had been languishing in my drafts for months. By all means, publishers should use the basic versions to check grammar — in conjuction with their brain (the brain is very important)! But many of the suggestions made by these programs are very subjective and some are completely wrong.

For an editor to accuse contributors of offering them work containing dozens of ‘errors’ when they’re just stylistic suggestions, is an insult to the writer. I did complain to the boss of Illumination at the time, because this experience is somewhat at odds with their submission guidelines, but I guess he’s a busy guy.

Saying that, last time the editor didn’t like my pics, she told me they wouldn’t use them, rather than deleting them… so perhaps my grumble achieved something.

More from me…