An editor asked a museum writer to revise a label about a restored painting. The first draft stated that cleaning had revealed the artist's original colors. A conservator objected that some pigments had changed chemically long before the cleaning began. Removing dirt could expose the current paint surface, but it could not reverse every earlier change. The writer replaced the claim with a narrower description of what the cleaning had made visible. The editor then asked the writer to explain why the original wording was too strong. Rather than citing the conservator's authority alone, the writer distinguished the removal of surface dirt from the recovery of a past physical state. When another label about a repaired sculpture was reviewed, the writer used the same distinction without copying the painting label. The editor treated that new explanation as stronger evidence of understanding than a corrected sentence by itself. Later, a sculpture label is changed from 'restored the original surface' to 'removed the later coating.' The writer explains that repair cannot necessarily reverse changes that occurred before the coating was applied.