You have finished writing a draft of an essay, article, blog post, book, or grant application. Now what? Believe it or not, editing your writing is just as important as the writing itself. Once you have completed an initial version of your written work, it may contain various errors or be missing important information. Editing involves taking what you have completed and making it better, proofreading for grammar issues, expanding on your ideas, or cutting away unnecessary content to improve the flow of your main points. This makes your writing clearer and more effective. However, even experienced writers sometimes struggle with the editing process. It can be challenging to make changes to something that you worked so hard on, or you may have a tight schedule with limited time to improve your draft. Luckily, this article includes 5 major suggestions that will help you improve your editing skills.
1. Consider Your Goals
Prior to writing, you should always consider what you are trying to achieve. This is also true for the editing process. Maybe you have written multiple drafts and only need to read through your piece one final time to make any last adjustments, or perhaps you have written a very rough draft that you know will need major revisions. Either way, identifying your goals is critical in deciding how much time you need to spend on editing and what you plan to focus on.
If you have experience with writing, you probably have some idea of your strengths and weaknesses. Recognizing that you need to focus on proofreading comma errors, that your writing is often too wordy, or that you struggle with paragraph structure will help you identify concerns in your writing more quickly. Having a good idea of what to look for and what changes you expect to make provides you with a good starting point, especially if you are feeling overwhelmed by the task.
2. Brush Up on Grammar Rules
Before you edit, it is important to know what clear writing looks like and to develop an understanding of common grammar errors. No matter how great your ideas are, they won’t be communicated effectively if your readers are distracted by all the mistakes you’ve made. There are various sources online and at the library that can help you recognize errors like comma splices, sentence fragments, verb tense issues, and other writing concerns. Learning the different parts of sentences such as subjects, prepositions, conjunctions, clauses, and other language elements can help you recognize how everything is supposed to connect and where you might be running into problems.
3. Learn How Good Writing is Structured
In addition to proofreading for grammar and spelling errors, you may also need to make more substantial edits to your content. Depending on your genre, good writing usually follows a logical progression of ideas where each key point connects to the one before it and the one after it. If your ideas don’t seem to fit together, you may need to rearrange or remove some of your writing. You may also need to change your words if you find they are too casual (or too formal) for what you are trying to communicate. Additionally, you might need to explain your ideas more if your writing is too brief or remove content if your writing has become too long-winded. These changes are often a crucial part of ensuring your work fulfills its goals; without these edits, all your great ideas may get lost due to stylistic issues or a lack of clarity.
4. Follow Useful Editing Techniques
Once you have a general idea of what to look for, there are several techniques you can use to edit your writing. One key method is reading your work out loud. This forces you to slow down and really consider how your writing actually sounds. You may notice that certain sentences are confusing or certain words seem out of place. This can help guide your efforts, making it easier to identify and correct potential issues.
Additionally, some people like to read their work backward, as this forces them to reevaluate it. You can start with your last sentence instead of the first. Sometimes we get so used to reading our work and become attached to how it sounds; reading it in a different way can make it less familiar and cause us to think more about the words we use. Furthermore, we can ask others to read our work, as they may have a more objective point of view. Writers should always think about how their writing sounds to other people; just because you understand your ideas doesn’t mean your reader will. If you have time, you can also take a few hours or a day away from your writing and then look back at it later, allowing you to approach your work with fresh eyes.
5. Clarity is Key
Sometimes writers get caught up in making their work beautiful, using flowery words and convoluted sentence structures to communicate an idea that would make more sense if it were written in a direct way. Being concise and getting to your point efficiently is usually the best approach, especially if your primary goal is to communicate information. While fancy language and complex imagery may work best in certain forms of poetry, most other genres benefit from a simple and straightforward approach where clarity is the most important factor. While having an enjoyable style is important, and using engaging words and sentences can prevent readers from getting bored, making your writing easier to understand is almost always at the centre of good editing.
Conclusion
Creating a draft is only one of the important steps of the wider writing process. Editing is just as vital to producing an effective final product, as it allows us to improve our work and make it clearer for our audience. This can be a daunting task for both beginners and experienced writers. Contact iPlume Writing today to learn about our editing services and how we can take your writing to the next level.
