So I'm writing this series for the Chicago Tribune and working with a new editor who I like a lot. However, in the first installment I felt a few of my more artful phrases were lost or damaged, and so I gently asked whether, for the next installment, I could be more involved in the "fine-sanding," as I put it.
Just as gently, he defended the first edit, saying, "And while we didn't lose many hard facts in the edit, I do feel we sped up the language—and the reading—by losing so many extraneous appearances of 'the,' for example."
W_F?!
Writing Boots readers, do I use 'the' too much? How could you have let me go all this time without saying something? You call yourselves my friends ….
(Yes, I plan to ask the editor which "the's" he cut out, and what, on earth, he replaced them with. Every day's the school day.)