Legacy Documents

Some documents have been in an organisation longer than most of the people working there. They have been copied, renamed, updated and passed from one person to another until nobody is entirely sure where the original came from.

That does not make them useless. It does mean that occasionally somebody needs to find out what is actually still true.

The Old Version Never Quite Disappears

A new document is often created from an old one. Last year's information pack becomes this year's information pack, an existing policy becomes the basis for a revised policy and a standard letter is copied because it already contains most of what is needed.

It saves time, but old information has a habit of surviving the process. A date gets changed while a reference to the previous year remains three pages later. A department has a new name in the heading but its old name still appears in the text. Contact details are updated in one place and missed in another.

An editor looking at the complete document rather than simply the amended sections can find what has been left behind.

Templates Can Become Untouchable

Organisations rely on templates for forms, letters, reports, policies and other regular documents. Over time, people add to them. A sentence is inserted because of a problem that occurred five years ago. Another paragraph is added after a change in procedure. Nobody removes anything because nobody is quite sure whether it is still required.

Eventually the template contains wording that everyone uses and nobody questions.

Editing a long-standing template can reveal duplicated instructions, obsolete information and passages that no longer appear to serve a purpose. Some may be safe to remove; others may exist for legal, regulatory or procedural reasons that are not obvious from the wording alone. An editor can question them, but the organisation needs to know why they are there before they disappear.

Systems Change Faster Than Documents

A document may tell someone to complete a form that no longer exists, contact a job title that has been abolished or use an online system that was replaced two years ago.

These errors are easy to miss precisely because the wording is familiar. Staff know what is meant and automatically substitute the current procedure when they read it. Someone outside the organisation cannot do that.

Links, email addresses, telephone numbers, department names, forms and instructions all need checking when older material is brought back into use.

Nobody Knows Who Wrote That Bit

Legacy documents can contain sentences whose origins have been completely lost. They may have been written by a former employee, copied from another document or added after a meeting nobody now remembers.

Most of the time that does not matter. It matters when the wording makes a promise, imposes a condition, describes a responsibility or states something as organisational policy.

An editor should not tidy such a passage into greater certainty. If nobody can establish whether it is still correct, that is something the organisation needs to resolve.

Sometimes the Document Has Had Its Day

There comes a point when updating an old document takes more work than replacing it. Years of amendments can leave the structure confused, information repeated in several places and sections arranged according to a system the organisation no longer uses.

Keeping the old document simply because it already exists is not always the economical option.

An editor can help identify when a document still has a sound structure underneath the accumulated changes and when there is very little worth preserving. Sometimes the most useful editorial advice is not another round of corrections, but that it is time to start again.