Having been an editor responsible for getting manuscripts up to scratch for the last five years or so, I am not sure. There is a lot to be said for allowing people to write in their own style. I hardly ever change sentences unless they actually don't make sense. You lose the life of the text. The alternative so often ends up with creating howlers that the author has to spend hours sifting out again. I learnt early on not to write for Springer, whose subeditors caused havoc with one of my books without even telling me they had made changes. In one case I was talking about joint symptoms and they made it sound as if I was talking about pregnancy.
I guess your 5 years trumps my 25 years then!
I've been on both sides too. And I know what it's like to have howlers created out of what I have written - but that's why it should be a collaborative enterprise.
Journals (like The Lancet) often have a strict house style, which will have certain conventions (grammatic, semantic and lexicographical). My job was to make sure that it was the science that spoke, without unwarranted spin from the author. But while this might be appropriate for articles, I agree that it is not appropriate for opinion pieces (commentary) and correspondence, so I was much more light-handed with those - and would only correct literals. Other colleagues were much more heavy handed, and would change every single sentence if they could (and did, when I was on the other side, much to my annoyance).
But arguably, it is just as important in an opinion piece to be clear. The writer always knows what they meant - the reader might not, and an editor will know where that ambiguity may lie. They won't get it right all the time - but that's why I would always check if I changed something.
But those days are gone. I won't be able to work for The Lancet again, because of my involvement here.
I guess that's why I would still like to be useful rather than derided. If I can't even offer that, then there's not much point in my being here.
