editing

10 Great Pieces of Advice About Editing

If you’re lucky, you know someone who can act as your editor, but most of us end up having to edit our own editing. There’s just one problem: it’s really hard to spot mistakes you made yourself. You might think some commercial editing software can help you, and although I’ll admit some of these are pretty good at picking up certain errors, none of them will find them all. You can believe me. I’ve tried a lot of them with hope in my heart. To test them, I feed them work I know is packed with errors, and I still haven’t found one able to find all of them. I guess this leads me to my first piece of advice:

Never Trust Editing Software

It’s actually quite comforting to know there are some things a machine can’t do effectively: writing is one of them, editing is another. Don’t rely on spell checkers, grammar checkers or any other writing programs to catch all of your errors. At least your eyes and your brain will never be made redundant by a machine. The Matrix needs us.

Let It Lie for a While

The worst possible time to try and edit something you’ve written is right after you write it. I find the greater the distance in time between me and my written work, the more effectively I’m able to edit it. It’s as if it becomes someone else’s work. I can read it impartially and with fresh eyes, picking out mistakes I previously missed. 24 hours is the absolute minimum, and 48 hours is even better. Do I practice what I preach? Ahem…

Read It Aloud

Yes, I know it feels dorky. Just pretend you’re a TV news reader or the narrator for a documentary. Put on your best “announcer” voice and read it as if it were a script. You can also have a program read it to you with the Word Counter proofread feature. (If you don’t see it above the text area, go to “options” and then click on “buttons”) Does anything make you falter? Are there sentences that sound weird? Did you need to pause at a place where there was no punctuation mark? These are areas that probably need tweaking, even if you can’t actually put your finger on the reason why they’re wrong.

Trust Your Instincts

It gets harder when you’re editing someone else’s work. You don’t want to offend them by making unnecessary changes. Sometimes, things are said in a way you wouldn’t have done it. Is it wrong? Maybe not, but I’d still advise an adjustment. When I edit, I can’t always say exactly why I changed this or that sentence, but in time, I’ve learned that my instincts are often right. It’s better to make an unnecessary change than to skip a change just because you aren’t sure how to explain it.

Track Changes

When editing another person’s work, track changes so they can decide if they want to accept your judgment or not. Then create a “clean” version (after saving the “changes tracked” one), and check again. I often find I pick up additional errors. Don’t ask me why. Maybe one doesn’t see everything the first time around. With your own work, there’s no need to track changes, but the final proofread rule still applies.

Look out for Ambiguity

You can be ambiguous without actually making a grammatical error. You know what you meant. Did you say what you meant? Imagine you know nothing about the topic and are reading about it for the first time. Does it make sense?

Pay Extra Attention to Long Sentences

The longer the sentence, the more likely it’ll contain an error. Have you put a comma where a period would be better? Is your thought presented in a crisp, clear way, or have you become tangled up in your own words?

Does Everything You Have Written Contribute?

When writing an essay, you’re trying to get a point across. Anything that doesn’t actually contribute to the point is redundant. Even in creative writing, there has to be a reason for everything you have said. You could be contributing to the atmosphere or providing background, but if what you’ve said does not contribute something, it’s just padding that waters down your prose.

Beware of Punctuation

It’s worth studying how to use punctuation marks. Commas, semi-colons, colons and dashes are often used incorrectly. Have you used them correctly? When in doubt, check. If you’re still not sure, rephrase.

Know Your Vices

When editing your own work, it’s good to know what mistakes you commonly make. Since you probably make them without even realizing it, have someone who knows their stuff give some of your writing a look over to point them out. Ask questions and learn to identify your slips. You’ll probably find your slips a few times before the lesson sinks in.

(Photo courtesy of Matt Hampel)

How to Reduce Your Essay Word Count

When it comes to writing essays, there are two frequent issues that arise; the word count is either too low or too high for the stated range of the essay. For those who perpetually end up with too few words, you need to figure out ways to increase your essay word count. For those who frequently find themselves with too many words on the page, there are some simple steps to take when editing to help reduce the number of words while at the same time making it a stronger piece of writing. Below are some suggestions to do this.

Rank Your Arguments

If you find you’re well above your word count maximum, the first step is to rank the points you use to substantiate your argument. By ranking the importance of the arguments you make in the essay, you can eliminate ones which aren’t as important as others, keeping the essay strong while removing large portions of writing. If you don’t want to eliminate any of the points, you can still reduce word count by mentioning all the arguments, but not writing as much detail about those not as strong as the more important points.

Focus on the Main Point

Once you determine what the important arguments are for your essay, read through it looking for any paragraphs or sentences which fail to address your main argument(s) or topic. It’s easy to accidentally go off on tangents when writing, and eliminating these tangents can help reduce word count. The more focused you can remain on your topic and arguments, the more concise your writing will be.

Use the Best Verb

This may sound obvious, but a lot of writers don’t do this well. When writing, always use the perfect verb rather than one that’s close, but not perfect. When you use the best verb possible, it will reduce the amount of writing you do in most cases. This is due to the fact that when you use a verb that’s not quite correct, you usually need to add more words to clarify your meaning. Here’s an example:

“They beat the opposing team by a lot of points.”

While “beat” is accurate in this case, it’s not the perfect verb because they not only beat the team, they beat the team by a lot. Using the better verb “trounce” in this instant will reduce the word count while still giving the same meaning as the longer sentence.

“They trounced the opposing team.”

Remove Adverbs

Look through your essay and see if you find any adverbs, especially adverbs which have “ly” endings. In many instances, these adverbs end up being filler words which end up being placed in the writing because it’s the way we talk, but the words don’t add anything beneficial to the actual essay. Go through the essay and ask if each one is needed and remove those that aren’t. Some words you may want to look out for are (click on image to expand to see better)

Remove Adjectives

Much in the same way as adverbs make their way into writing, multiple adjectives are used when one (or none at all) would suffice. Read the essay to see if all of the adjectives used are needed, and remove those which don’t add to the meaning of the sentence being written. Some common adjectives to look for are:

able, bad, big, different, early, first, few, good, great, high, important, large, last, little, long, new, next, old, other, own, public, right, same, small, young

(Photo courtesy of Matt Hampel)