What comes back, and what each part is for
An edited file usually arrives as three things rather than one, and each has a different job.
The tracked changes are the edits themselves, each attributable and each reversible. They are a record before they are a proposal, which is why the file matters more than the marks in it.
The queries are the questions the editor could not answer alone, and they are read the way an editorial letter is read. Editors Canada's fundamentals ask that queries, memos, and author letters be clear, tactful, succinct, and actionable, and that an editor request clarification of meaning and intent rather than supplying it.2
The style sheet records the decisions taken, so the next person does not ask again. Editors Canada places building it inside copy editing, alongside checking mechanical consistency.3
An author who reads only the first of those three has received a third of the work, and usually the least useful third.
How to answer, in an order that does not create new errors
Queries come first and changes second. A query resolved after the surrounding text has been accepted is a query answered against a document that has already moved, which is how a clean answer produces a new error.
Work in one pass rather than several sittings where possible, because tracked changes accumulate. An author's revision of an editor's revision produces layers that are hard to read and easy to misresolve.
Reject rather than delete. Rejecting a change restores the original cleanly, and the record shows that a decision was taken. Deleting the marked text and retyping it produces a new change that nobody can trace to anything.
Answer in the file rather than in an email. A query answered in correspondence and not in the document leaves a manuscript that still carries the question, and a later reader has no way to know it was settled.
The setting that quietly changes what a reader sees
Word processors can display a document with markup shown or hidden, and the hidden view looks like a finished file. Microsoft's own documentation describes the corresponding editing options and notes that settings apply to all the documents an author edits rather than to the current one.4
Two practical consequences follow. An author reviewing with markup hidden may approve changes they have not seen. And a file sent onward with tracked changes still present carries the whole editorial history to whoever opens it, including a publisher, a committee, or an opposing party.
Checking that before a file leaves is a habit worth having, and it belongs in the same pass as the file properties. Both are invisible on the page and travel with the document.
What to keep, and for how long
Three files are worth keeping at the end of a job. They are the original as submitted, the tracked-changes version as returned, and the final clean version.
Anyone who may later have to show what was done, which includes every student working under a permission agreement, needs all three. Editors Canada's guidance also asks that the arrangement be recorded, including acknowledgment of the editor in the finished work where a contract provides for it.1
What EditFast returns
Tracked changes, the queries raised, and the style sheet, on every job. We query rather than resolve wherever a decision belongs to the author, and we keep the working copies for the duration of the project so a client who overwrites a file has somewhere to go.
Everything a client sends is treated in confidence, including drafts, tracked-changes files, and correspondence. What each level of work covers is published, and the style sheet is part of every copyedit.
An author about to open an edited file for the first time can save themselves a second round with one decision. Read it once with markup shown and change nothing. The reading is faster than the arguing, and it is the only time the document will show both versions at once.