Last week an unknown hand posted a short quotation on the copy desk bulletin board at The Sun, a sentence from one of my own posts about what to expect when you allow a dolt to edit your copy. The effect, you see, is to turn my own words against the copy desk. Can you beat it? Devilishly clever.

It appears that I have, in these operations, touched on a tender part.

So, in the interest of achieving a broader perspective on the tensions that sometimes rise between writer and editor, I suggest that you consider a post by my learned colleague, Phillip Blanchard, at the Testy Copy Editors Web site.

He has, at various times and at various newspapers, edited the work of Roger Ebert, Bob Woodward and Robert Novak, and he comments: “Each is extraordinarily cooperative with copy editors. ... I never got so much as a hint of resistance from any of them. They know their jobs and accept that we know ours.”

Brother Blanchard’s experience dovetails with everything I have seen over more than a quarter-century as a copy editor. The ablest reporters and writers are, almost without exception, the most cooperative with the copy desk. Those who are most antagonistic tend to have the most to be defensive about.

Now not every copy editor is equally able, and all of us are guilty at one time or another of making really dumb judgments. And antagonisms do crop up because of differences in personality and temperament. If a reporter has difficulty with a single copy editor, we should probably chalk that up to inescapable personal differences. But if a reporter has difficulty with the copy desk in general, there is something wrong with the reporter.

That principle works in reverse, too. And the copy editors read this blog, so you needn’t trouble yourself to post that.