Oct 1, 2014 / Intermediate

Nitpickers of the World, Unite Edit!

Members of the Daily Post crew share some of their favorite editing tips (multi-colored pens: recommended).

Like most activities we subject to intense procrastination, editing our drafts is something we dread starting, but never regret once we’re done. To give you a push next time you’re staring at the screen, we’ve assembled a few time-tested editing tips straight from The Daily Post crew. Do try these at home!

Ben Huberman

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My not-so-secret self-editing tip (I give it all the time) is to read your text out loud.

Your eyes will often gloss over awkward phrasing, missing punctuation, and poor word choices (to say nothing of basic typos). Your ears won’t; they’ll force you to stop.

I find this technique especially effective when you’re giving a completed draft its first read-through. You might be dying to hit the “Publish” button and call it a day, but your voice will force you to slow down a bit and zone in on any remaining problem spots. These might not be huge on their own, but cumulatively they can make solid writing feel sloppy.

Erica Varlese

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My self-editing tip? Let it rest.

A good night’s sleep, or even an hour away from the computer, clears my brain, letting me come back to my writing with a fresh perspective. If you re-read your work immediately after writing it, it can feel repetitive and the words may not fully sink in, making it easy to miss spelling errors, redundancies, and odd phrasings.

By letting your words rest and subsequently settle, it’s much easier to pretend you’re a new reader and pick up on improvements you wouldn’t have caught otherwise. At times, this tactic requires some extra planning, but it’s well worth it for the few extra tweaks you’ll pick up on.

Wendy Scott

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Ben and Erica covered two of my favorite tips, but I’ll add this: don’t rely on spellcheck.

Spellcheck is fine to use as a first pass, but don’t assume that it will catch everything. Spellchecking tools generally have a hard time identifying misspelled homophones (for example, here and hear, or there and their) and commonly misused words like affect and effect.

Spellcheck isn’t always reliable in picking up on grammar errors, either, such as misplaced modifiers, run-on sentences, or subject-verb agreement. Finally, spellcheck usually doesn’t flag typos if they are correctly spelled words. For example, I can type “park the care” and spellcheck thinks that’s fine when it really should be “park the car.”

The bottom line is that spellcheck can help, but there’s no substitute for putting your own eyes on your writing to spot and correct errors.

Krista Stevens

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Get a trusted reader. Joan Didion and John Gregory Dunne shared work with one another at the end of the writing day. William Whitehead read Timothy Findley’s work aloud each evening, over a glass of wine. If Whitehead stumbled over a passage, Findley knew readers would, too.

Your trusted reader is someone who will help you identify clunky writing, muddled constructions, and hazy thinking. They’ll gently call you on being pompous and verbose; they’ll be your loving accessory to murder as you kill off your darlings. They’re your writerly soft place to fall, that person who reads your hideous, misshapen first draft and sees that first draft for the shining piece of writing it will be, not the ugly, half-formed, drooling creature it is now.

Michelle Weber

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My editing secret is to go old-school: it might seem counterintuitive for a blogger, but when in doubt, print it out.

(I’m not sure if I’m offering useful advice here, or just showing my age!)

Reading my work on paper has lots of benefits for me. On a nitty-gritty level, it’s easier to spot typos when I’ve got a physical red pen and can scrawl on a piece of paper. On a broader level, seeing my whole post at once helps me evaluate it as a complete piece of writing in a way that is more difficult when I’m viewing words on screen, a few paragraphs at a time. When I can consider the entirety of a post, it’s easier to step back and see where there are holes and to evaluate the overall flow. If I’m feeling especially stuck, I might even cut the paper up so I can shuffle the paragraphs around and see how they read in a different order.

A witty turn of phrase doesn’t mean much if the whole post doesn’t hang together. There’s no better way for me to make sure it does than seeing every word arrayed before me.

Also, what Erica said.

Andrea Badgley

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Wield the red pen.

I like to touch my writing. When I’ve got a draft ready, I print it out on paper and use multi-colored pens for down-and-dirty, nitty-gritty editing.

If I am writing a descriptive piece, I select five different colors of fine-tipped markers to mark sense words. For example, I’ll circle sight words in blue (balloon), audio words in green (pop), smell words in yellow (smoke), touch words in red (scald), and taste words in orange (oily). When I’m finished, I can glance at the page and see the distribution of colors. If the piece is awash in blue, I’ll know I’ve focused disproportionately on sight words. If I see no green or red, I’ll know I need to add sound and texture to pull the reader into the scene.

Colored pens work for sentence variation as well. I might circle all terminal punctuation for a quick glance at sentence lengths, or underline fragments in pink, simple sentences in yellow, and compound sentences in turquoise. If I see all long sentences, or see no pink or yellow on the page, I’ll make sure to pop in a fragment or a simple sentence to add punch.

Elizabeth Urello

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If it’s an important piece of writing, I’ll sometimes write it again from scratch. This is especially helpful if you know there are sections that need to be revised, but you feel like it’s “finished” and are having a hard time editing it.

If you pretend you lost your original piece and write it all over again, the stuff that’s still in it is probably genuinely important. The stuff you forgot or left out? Probably didn’t need that anyway. And if you don’t like your rewrite, well, you still have the original, so no harm done.

Robyn Okrant

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My colleagues have awesome ideas. I’m going to steal piggyback on one of them: I read everything out loud when I edit, just as Ben has suggested.

If I cringe when I hear my own work, if I’m rambling and don’t have a consistent tone, or wonder why my ideas don’t seem cohesive, I imagine I’m reading the text to a specific person.

It’s important to pick the right audience: my mom is an awesome imaginary audience for humor, wordplay, and clever dialogue. If I am attempting concise, persuasive language, I visualize a particularly tough professor I had in college. Finally, if I want an angry diatribe to sound focused and biting, I pretend I’m face-to-face with Kris, a girl who bullied me in elementary school. Seriously, she was awful. Sure, therapy might help, but why get rid of that resentment when she is such a great editing tool?

What’s the best editing tip you’ve ever received? How do you go about the self-editing process? Let us know in the comments!

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  1. I’ve been reading the comments, and it looks as if those commenting ignored your suggestions on editing. Even in comments, it pays to edit.

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  2. I LOVED this, thank you so much guys. I liked Andrea’s tip, just because I’ve never really heard that one before

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  3. I’ve always done well by reading my work out loud. It got me through college. But I’m terrible when it comes to blog posts. I find that I need to send out a post and read it in its published state. That’s when I make my edits. So crazy.

    I’m currently in the second phase of editing my book, and I’m find it so difficult. I almost feel like I’m ruining what I had as a first draft by going over things again and again.

    But – great advise from all!

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  4. The most challenging point in pursuits both academic and existential is beginning it. It’s my belief that procrastination is humankind’s defense mechanism, as it is in our nature to seek pleasure and avoid pain. As a writing tutor I have found that in reading their piece aloud, the student will catch most of their own errors. This is especially useful with Global English students. This technique also helps to draw out that internal conversation that writers must have with themselves. Love this technique!

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  6. I LOVE editing and I’ve used all these techniques in the past. Sometimes I get lazy, or I have a piece of writing that is really nothing more than my thoughts spilling out, and in those instances I don’t edit. but most of my blog posts stay in my drafts for at least a week before I have the courage to publish them.

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  7. Thanks to everyone who contributed to this very helpful post!
    I’ve never read my blog posts out loud to myself but it’s a great editing tip ..
    I’ll start doing it next time..

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  8. I was agreeing diligently – yep, read aloud, yep, print it out. And then I got to Andrea’s tip. You wouldn’t believe how silly I felt. I’ve spent years reading other’s works with coloured pencils – topic sentences in red, joiners and qualifiers in blue etc – to ensure I understand what they have written. It never occurred to me to read my own drafts that way.

    Big thanks to Andrea for great advice that will suit me to a tee.

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  9. There are some great tips here! I have heard some of them before, but I think that just proves they are good tips! One tip that is great for checking spelling (and only spelling) is to read your post backwards! This allows you to focus on each word one at a time and doesn’t allow you to get distracted with cohesion/ clarity or structure. They are still important and deserve a separate look. I like the idea of colour-coding different elements as well – there are several variations of this technique – it’s versatile according to your focus too.

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  10. I’ll join the people who endorse reading aloud. And add this: When something isn’t working, look for a way to break the framework you’ve created. It’s so easy to get trapped in the framework our first drafts and think they’re the best we can do.

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  11. I like the idea of imagining different audiences to hone different aspects of the work (Thanks, Robyn Okrant!).
    Another tip is to use ‘Find and Replace’ for the words that you most commonly mis-spell (like ‘their’ and ‘there” or a list of your own favourites). Just put each of them into the ‘Find’ search bar and click through quickly, checking your use of each one.
    Oh, and do this RIGHT at the end before you publish – when we re-write paragraphs at the last minute we often create more errors than we correct!

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  12. This is timely. I hate to, but I let it sit, coming back to my writing gives me new eyes. I read aloud as well. I loved the idea of colored pencil for the senses.

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  13. I enjoyed reading all of these suggestions. As a nitpicker, myself, I do most of these. In addition to printing it out, I print it in a font I’m not used to looking at–sometimes in double double columns. Anything to get my brain out of its rut.

    Another thought, when I’m struggling to communicate something clearly, I put everything aside, start walking around my house and “talk to my kids,” as though I were explaining it to them. I stumble around with my words as I finally get to the phrases that communicate what I want in a way that is understandable.

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  15. I do a preliminary beginning to end read-through, then I read my work backwards. I start with the end, reading each sentence in reverse order. It makes me focus on whether each sentence makes sense. Then, I read from front to back again. And again. And after I publish, etc., etc., etc.

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  16. Reading aloud – I do so hearing others do is assuring; feeling less crazy! Colored pens – Just Genius! I used to do something similar with research papers and educational writing. Digging the idea of making my blog words a visual picture to “see” what the consumption will be like! Thanks!

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  17. I am using some of these tips already, mainly let it rest and review later. Something that is helping me a lot, strangely, is writing in two languages. I usely write the first drafy in English, then start writing in French. As I type in my native language, I often change the tone and some sentences. Then when I’m happy with the French version, I go back to the English version to edit it and make it more in synch with the French version. It can be a long process, but it helps me staying focused on the topic. The hard part is humour: some puns cannot be really translated or even adapted. Different cultures, different sense of humour.

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  18. The best advice I have received on editing my work was in a workshop I took years ago at Iowa State University by a professional writer on staff . She suggested that we conduct one kind of edit at a time.

    As an example, first look for misspellings, then for punctuation problems, followed by grammar review, next look for words that are used or spelled incorrectly. Proceed to other issues, like use of numbers in all kinds of ways, from dates to when we use numerals versus words, to numbered lists. In the case of a blog, check the title, then be sure the subtitles are in the same size font and treated equally with bold or italics.

    One can make their own list of what kinds of things they need to check in their edit phase.

    At that time, I worked with a staff member to self-edit our four-page newsletter. When I completed my edit, I had found over one-hundred mistakes, we had already missed on about three previous reviews of our work. No joke! It really works.

    May we all be patient enough to make this work for ourselves.

    By the way, this kind of editing is not to be confused with revision in which the work needs to be rethought and rewritten.

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  20. Editing, Shmediting! I was married to a technical writer who took a red pen to my love letters to him! Seriously, this was really great to read all the comments and see what works for people. I am with Michelle – – I’m old. And old school. Print it out!

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  22. I like to sing everything I write in a Frankie Valli’ish falsetto. In the frozen food aisle of Stop&Shop. Around midnight. Great acoustics and interesting clientele at that hour. Only been thrown out once. So far…

    Seriously, all good advice.

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  24. i write in the night, so i leave the write up for some time, maybe the next morning to read it again, make correctionw before posting. (hope i still make sense after that)

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  27. I take the reading aloud one step farther. I have a text-to-speech program I listen to. It helps me catch most of my errors. Unfortunately, I still let some slip by. According to some, far too many.

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