What does “STET all changes” mean when it comes to editing a piece of writing? apparently Bill Simmons wrote that at the top of all his pieces for ESPN.
It’s an editing term to ignore an emendation. From the latin for ‘let it stand’.
[Moderating]
A factual question, not an artistic one. Moved to GQ.
This recently tripped up a contestant on*** Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?*** His reasoning was, Why mark something STET when it doesn’t need to be changed?
Because it might be a deliberate misspelling (for effect) or something nonstandard or unfamiliar, for starters. The editor has to know so that he/she doesn’t follow his/her instincts and change it.
In other words, he was asking them to publish his errors, to leave everything exactly as he wrote it. I don’t know if they complied.
Or maybe that he didn’t trust them to know better than he what he meant to say and how he meant to say it?
As in this example of why one shouldn’t type in fury:
https://www.google.co.uk/amp/s/amp.theguardian.com/media/2008/jul/23/mediamonkey
When I worked at the newspapers in Bangkok, we proofread the pages at the end of the night, and each page went through multiple sets of eyes. You had to use it if you didn’t want to have to change it back after every single look-through.
I have seen quotations in text given ‘sic’. ‘Stet’ seems more like it would cancel out an editorial change.
Yeah, sic is usually for the benefit of the reader while stet wouldn’t end up being part of the final printed copy.
Stet is needed because half of all editors are below average.
Professional editor here.
In some cases I would query the author or even another editor whether he meant what is described above or that, in a second pass, he changes his mind on changes in his previous emendations which should be revoked or, in fact, if someone has been editing the emendations themselves in a round two, that he really meant those changes and stop fucking with his decisions.
FTR, stet is the Latin for “let it stand” and sic the Latin, where it is an adjective for comparisons, for “thus” or “so.”
I’m a sub-editor. If I get a page proof back from a writer or an editor with a correction that I don’t agree with, I will write “stet” next to it and ignore it. Likewise if I’m marking up a proof for somebody else and I mark a change incorrectly, or change my mind, I will write “stet” next to the change.
Bingo… Did you ever work for me? 
And so Bill Simmons, if he indeed did that, was trying to preempt any editing of his work whatsoever, rather ham-handedly saying, “Keep your mitts off.”