“The secret of good writing,” says William Zinsser* author of On Writing Well: An Informal Guide to Writing Nonfiction, “is to strip every sentence to its cleanest components.” This means getting rid of every word that serves no function but only weakens your sentence.
Good writing is also well organized with ideas expressed clearly and logically, and it is written with the reader in mind. It’s error free with no typos, no spelling or grammatical mistakes and no missing captions or titles.
Getting to good takes time and depending on the complexity and length of your document, it can include several types of editing as well as a final proofread.
If you have written an email then you will probably just have to proofread it. But if you have written a report it will involve a lot more than that. You may want to ask an editor to review it.
Types of editing
There are several types of editing including substantive or structural editing, stylistic editing, copy editing and plain language editing.
As a part of my work, I edit technical and business reports and guides that have been written by subject experts. The intended reader is usually not an expert but is interested in the topic. In my experience, there is a lot of overlap between the different types of editing and most documents longer than a few pages require two or three editing passes.
Here’s how I tackle an editing job.
Structure and organization
My first read or editing pass of the document is to check for logic and organization as well as for repetition, conflicting information and gaping holes in an argument.
Here are the types of questions I ask myself as I do the first pass.
- Does it all fit together into a coherent whole?
- Is the order logical?
- Is all the necessary information included?
- Is there information that is not necessary or repetitive that could be cut?
- Does information on one page contradict information on another page?
- Do the tables and graphics agree with the information in the text, and do they add anything useful for the reader?
Style
In the second editing pass, I get rid of jargon, clarify the meaning of passages, improve the flow of the text and sometimes rework the style to suit the intended audience.
Here are some questions I ask when checking for style.
- Is the language easy to understand (from the reader’s point of view), or is it a full of jargon, acronyms and technical or business terms?
- Are the sentences too long? (keep them to 20 words or less)
- Are there long words when short words would do?
- Example: instead of prioritise and replicate use rank and copy
- Are there puffed out phrases that could be deleted or shortened
- Example: instead of in the event that use when or if
Structural and stylistic editing can often blur into rewriting. It requires a lot of back and forth with the author of the document to ensure they are comfortable with the changes and that the meaning isn’t changed in the process.
Copy editing
The next pass is the more mechanical side of editing. Short documents may only require a copy edit.
Here are the types of things to check when doing a copy edit.
- Grammar, spelling and punctuation – are they error free and used consistently throughout the document?
- Title and subtitles – is the size, style and font consistent throughout?
- Footnotes, endnotes — are they in the same style and spelling as the rest of the text?
- Tables and graphics — are they in the same style and spelling as the text and are the captions in place and correct?
A word about style guides and style sheets
The English language is filled with contradictions. To help with consistency I make certain decisions before I start editing.
As well as formal style guides such as Canadian Press Stylebook and the Chicago Manual of Style, in consultation with the client, I develop a style sheet to help with consistency when there is a choice.
Here are the types of things I might include in a style sheet.
- Spelling preferences (Canadian Oxford, British or American)
- Dates, e.g., year/month/day OR month/day/year?
- Capitalization, e.g., upper or lower case for job titles?
- Punctuation, e.g., apostrophe only or apostrophe plus s for possessive of names ending in s?
- Abbreviations, e.g., write out United States or abbreviate and if it’s abbreviated will it be U.S. or US?
- Titles in full or abbreviated, upper case or lower case, e.g., president or President, CEO or chief executive officer?
Proofreading
Proofreading is the final pass. It involves checking over the text in finer detail after the editing stage. I prefer to do it after a document has been laid out for print or electronic publishing. That’s because, when I proofread a document, I look for errors in the text and in the layout.
More often than not however, I am asked to proofread before the document is laid out.
In this case, I try to take a break from the document for at least a day. It is almost impossible to proofread something you have just written or edited. In the best case scenario, I ask a colleague to do the proof.
Here the primary things I check in a proofread.
- Errors in spelling, grammar and punctuation as well as typos that might have been missed at the editing stage
- Missing lines of text or lines of text that have been repeated
- Heads or titles that are at the bottom of one page with the text beginning on the next page
- Placement of graphics and tables and their page references
- Page numbers at the beginning of the chapters or sections match those in the table of contents.
A final word on the final word
In the end, the final word on the document belongs to the author. As an editor and proofreader, my job is to help the author tell their story clearly. Or, as one client said, “It’s just how I wanted it to read, only better.”
___________________________________________________________________________________
*William Zinsser passed away May 12, 2015. He was 92. Mr Zinsser wrote 19 books, taught at Yale, was a drama editor and a movie critic for the New York Herald Tribune and editor of the Book-of-the-Month Club. His book On Writing Well sold more than 1.5 million copies.
