10 minutes

The dignity-and-equity edit

One pass through a real document with a short guide: what each claim rests on, which words carry a judgment, where the actor disappeared, what the numbers can support, and what identifying detail is not needed. Then the changes you own, and the ones you route.

What you’ll be able to do

Run a dignity-and-equity edit on one real internal document, recording what each claim rests on, what you changed, what you could not change, and who owns the rest.
Compare the responses to this question and explain your choice: Where does the edit start?
Draft a dignity-and-equity edit of one real document for your work, including the document and who reads it next, what it claims, and what each claim rests on, words carrying a judgment.

An edit is not a softening

People hear “edit this for dignity” and expect to be asked to make a document gentler, vaguer or more careful about feelings. Almost the opposite happens. Nearly every change in the guide below makes a document more exact: a named actor instead of a passive construction, a date and a language instead of a summary verb, a count instead of a percentage, a specific gap instead of a general character sentence. The respectful version and the precise version turn out to be the same sentence, which is convenient, because the precise version is also the one that survives an appeal.

Run it as one pass, not five. Reading a document five times looking for five different things takes five times as long and catches less, because the problems cluster: the sentence with no actor is usually the same sentence carrying the judgment, and the percentage that overstates is usually the one with no limit attached. One careful read with the eight questions in mind does the work.

Then split what you find in two. Some of it is yours — wording, structure, what a paragraph claims, how much detail an example carries. Some of it is not: a required notice sentence, a locked data field, a template heading, a policy that sets a ten-day window. Write both down. The part you cannot change is not a failure of the edit; it is the finding the edit produced, and it is worth more to the person who owns that template or that policy than any general complaint about tone.

A dignity-and-equity edit of one real document

Eight questions to take through one document in a single pass, with a record of what you changed, what you could not, and who owns the rest.

The document and who reads it next What it is, who wrote it, where it goes, and who will still be reading it after that: a decision maker, an auditor, a person exercising a data request, the person the document is about. Write down the furthest reader you can imagine, because that is the one you are actually editing for.

What it claims, and what each claim rests on List the document's claims in order. Beside each, write the evidence in the document itself. Any claim with nothing beside it becomes either an open question, a cited conclusion, or a deletion — and you decide which, in writing, rather than leaving it to the reader.

Words carrying a judgment Mark every word describing a person's character, motivation or effort: uncooperative, refused, non-compliant, failure to engage, hard to reach, difficult, high-need, unmotivated. For each one, write what actually happened instead. Keep a process term only where the specific obligation and the specific gap sit in the same sentence.

Where the actor disappeared Find every sentence with no one in it: the notice was not returned, documentation was not provided, contact was not established. Put the actor back at each step — who sent what, to which address, in which language or format, with how many days to respond, and what came back.

Culture, community and country of origin Find every place where culture, language, community or country explains an outcome. If a community told the division this, cite that conversation. If not, it is an untested explanation: remove it, and name the parts of the division's own process that were never examined.

Numbers and what they can support For each figure: who is counted, who is missing, where the category came from, who completes the field, and how large the group is. Report small counts as counts. Add one line saying what the figure cannot tell the reader, and keep that line in the document rather than saving it for a question.

People in the document: consent, detail and dignity For any real person's situation used as an example: who agreed and to what, which identifying details are genuinely needed for the point being made, which can go, whether the person or organization is compensated for their part, and who is checking the final wording before it is sent.

Changed, routed, and who owns what Two short lists. What you changed, with a one-line reason for each, ready to send to the author. What you could not change — a required sentence, a locked field, a template, a deadline set in policy — with the office or person who owns it, and the wording you would suggest. Send both the same day.

Copy the eight lines into the notes for one document you are working on this week. Fill them in as you read it once, make the changes you own, send the author the short list of what changed and why, and route the rest with suggested wording to whoever owns it.

Browse and download only. Staff notes are not typed or saved on this page.

Changes that need nobody's permission

Put the actor back into every passive sentence about a process the division ran.
Replace a character word with the sequence of what was offered, when, how, and what was received.
Move any explanation you cannot evidence into a short list of open questions, and keep the list in the document.
Report a small group as a count, with the size of the group in the same sentence as the finding.
Add one line to every figure saying what it cannot tell the reader.
Cut identifying detail from an example down to what the point actually requires.
Write the date, the language and the format into any sentence about a notice, a letter or a request.
Say what a program abbreviation means the first time it appears, including in internal documents.

Say what changed, and why, the same day

What you can change

You control whether the author learns anything from your edit, and whether the person who owns the template ever hears about the problem in it.

What to watch for

Do not fix a document silently and move on. The next draft arrives with the same sentences, the author never knows why their wording changed, and the locked field or required sentence that caused half the trouble goes unreported for another year.

Your next step

After your next edit, send two short notes: one to the author listing what changed with a reason beside each, and one to whoever owns the part you could not change, with the wording you would suggest.

Which edit note is complete enough for a colleague to act on?

Softened some of the language in the participation section and cleaned up the numbers.

Replaced “families here are less engaged” with the authorization count and a two-line list of what the review did not examine; changed “eighteen percent lower” to “eleven of the records in this group,” since the group is fourteen; removed age, county and diagnosis from the case example, which the point does not need; and rewrote “notices were not returned” to name the mailing date, the language and the ten-day window. The ten-day window is set in policy — I have sent the wording to the office that owns it and suggested an alternative.

Reviewed for stigmatizing language and made edits throughout; happy to discuss before Thursday.

Flagged four issues in the margins for the author to resolve before the meeting.

Try a situation

A program unit has drafted a two-page briefing note going to a division leadership meeting on Thursday. You are asked to tighten it. Reading it, you find a sentence attributing lower participation in one region to “community preferences,” a headline percentage that turns out to rest on fourteen records, a short case example with a person's age, county, diagnosis and household composition in it, and a passive sentence saying that renewal notices “were not returned.” The author is a colleague you work with often, and the meeting is in two days.

Where does the edit start?

Fix the sentence about community preferences first, since that is the line most likely to cause a problem if it is quoted outside the division.

Work through the document once against the guide — what each claim rests on, which words carry a judgment, where the actor disappeared, what the numbers can support, what detail is not needed — then make the changes you own, send the author the reasons, and route what belongs to someone else.

Send it back to the author with a note asking them to review the language before it goes up.

Carry this forward

Editing for dignity is mostly editing for precision. The sentence that respects a person is usually the sentence that says exactly what happened.
Some fixes are yours. Others belong to whoever owns the template, the data field, the required wording or the underlying process. Both kinds belong in the record; only one of them is your work to finish.
Telling the author what changed and why is what makes the next draft better. A silent edit fixes one document; an explained edit changes a habit.
A short pass run consistently changes what the division's documents look like far more than a style memo ever will.

A scenario about a briefing note you are asked to tighten before it goes to leadership, the dignity-and-equity guide itself, a list of changes that need nobody's permission, and a knowledge check on what makes an edit note usable.

Run the guide on one document you are working on this week, send the author a short note on what changed and why, and route the items you could not change to whoever owns them with suggested wording attached.

Your next step

Which document will you run the guide on, and who needs to hear what changed?

Name the document and the day you will run the guide on it

Name one line only someone else can change, and the person or office that owns it

Decide how you will tell the author what changed and why, in a way that is usable rather than corrective

Browse and download only. Course notes are not typed or saved on this page.

Mark this lesson complete

Participation and course completion in this program do not count toward DHS-required training credits unless management, a director, or DHS leadership expressly approves an exception.