Hello, Writing Friends!
Welcome to my new series, Text Tips! This series will focus on the “nuts and bolts” of creating your text. Last time, we talked about the Writing Triangle. In this edition, we will talk about effective ways to edit your work. For a quick overview, I designed the infographic below.
If you find these tips helpful, feel free to share it with anyone else you think would benefit from it.
When editing your work, these five tips can make your process more effective, efficient, and painless:
Focus on One Thing at a time!
This is especially important if you have a million things on your mind or if you have ADHD like I do. I find it much harder to pay attention to three things at once, so I break my editing up to focus on only one thing. For example, I do all of the word-choice editing in one pass, then I do all of the punctuation editing at one time, etc. This way, I review the text several times, but I find that it takes more or less the same amount of time as trying to do everything at once. I’m much more focused though, so it’s much more effective.
Don’t Slow Your Roll!
When trying to get your ideas down on paper, it can be frustrating to pause to look something up. To keep myself chugging along, I underline words in my text or leave myself a comment so I can fix these problems during one of my editing passes.
Make Big Changes First!
I encourage writers to choose a structure for their project as early as they can. Until you are positive that a paragraph or section will stay in your text, don’t waste your time correcting small issues like punctuation or syntax, because you don’t want to waste precious time editing sections that you may end up removing later. A good general rule is to go from largest to smallest features. Move from chapter to section, then to paragraphs, then sentences, then word choice, and capitalization and punctuation should come last. (As we’ll discuss in #5, this does not apply to the introduction, conclusion, and transitions, which should be edited last.)
Pay Equal Attention to Your Entire Text!
Many of us begin with a review of what was written before, usually from the beginning. While this practice is helpful in reminding us of what we have already written, it can lead to certain parts of the text getting more editing time than others. If you are like most authors, you probably tend to edit your intro a million times, but later sections of the paper get little attention. This leads to a tight introduction, followed later by a rough, less-focused conclusion. Instead, copyedit a new section of the paper whenever you sit down to write (after all, you have already fixed everything in your intro at least three times already). Being deliberate about focusing on later parts of your work can have a big impact on the integrity of your text as a whole.
Check your transitions, intro, and conclusion last!
In non-fiction writing, these parts of your text are vitally important for the reader’s experience because they guide her through your ideas. If this part of your paper’s structure is unclear, the reader may get confused and stop reading— and nobody wants that! Before you click the “send” button, review these parts because your text may have evolved between when you started writing and when you completed it. Some people find that their intended conclusion is actually a more effective introduction and have to move it! (But of course, then you have to write another conclusion.) Make sure that every paragraph besides the intro has a complete topic sentence with a transition in it. If you’ve done a good job with this, the reader should be able to recreate your argument just by looking at the intro, the topic sentences, and the conclusion. These components serve as the “framework” of your paper, and the paragraphs hang on each section of the frame. Lastly, since your ideas may evolve throughout the writing of your text, double-check that your intro and conclusion represent what you actually discuss in the paper.
While it can be challenging to see your own mistakes, following these tips will make your editing more effective and take your writing to the next level before you share it with others.
I “play requests”! If there are any text issues you would like me to discuss, please drop me a line at dr.zhenya@empowerugroup.com.
Until next time, Friends, keep sharing your magic with the world, and keep on writing!
Dr. Zhenya