A pat on the back

Some years ago, a publishing company invited me to be a copyeditor for a new journal they had acquired. I got the invitation because I had done a good job on a previous journal for them, so I knew going in that I was "good enough."

I accepted.

Their customer, a very important major medical association, is incredibly fussy, and the negative feedback began pouring in. 

Usually, I was being gigged (gigged? A large fork hunters use to impale frogs, fish, etc) for minor things, but the criticism was pretty devastating nonetheless. Seemed like no matter how hard I tried, there was always something wrong. 

Once in a while I would get a "Good job" remark, but not often.

I cried a lot. Richard put signs in my office to encourage me. About once a week I vowed I was going to quit, but I didn’t. 

I got an e-mail from them yesterday:

It’s very rare that I work on a post-edit review and don’t have a single correction to make to it. I just worked on an article that was so perfect that I said “Beautiful!” and had to know the copyeditor—it was you… I just wanted to thank you for your great work…

Well, I just about cried again, but for a different reason. And today there is a lovely essay on this very topic on Pocket…

You really can make someone's day happier by offering a bit of praise.