I’m often asked to edit friends’ or coworkers’ writing, anything from emails to short stories to documentation. Recently, someone asked me how I edit. What am I looking for? How do I know what changes to make? That made me stop and think about what I’ve been doing semi-instinctually.
In this post, I want to distill the major points of editing that I believe in but haven’t spelled out until now. Much of this advice applies across genres. Personally, I wrote academic papers in college, write poetry and short fiction in my free time, and write technical documentation for work, and I’ve applied the same basic editing techniques to all.
I also think that different genres inform each other. There are principles I’ve taken from fiction writing that make my technical language even clearer, and learning just how much people skim when reading technical documentation has improved how I format and write things like emails.
Here are my recommendations:
- Decide what you’re actually saying
- Repeat yourself (within reason)
- Simplify
- Eliminate passive voice
- Don’t use adverbs
- Don’t assume knowledge
- Be aware of your tone
- Avoid jargon and clichés
- Make use of whitespace
Decide What You’re Actually Saying
Before you ever get to editing at the sentence level, you have to determine whether you’ve said what you meant to say.
I recommend writing a preamble, just for your own use, on everything you write. Take a few minutes and consider what you’re trying to say. What is your main point? Who are you writing for? Then actually write this information down at the top of your document (or notebook, or cafe napkin) so it’s there staring you in the face as you work. As you write, and as you edit, you can compare what you have on the page to what you set out to do.
It also forces you to think about what your message actually is. Say you want to write a blog post: if you can’t summarize the point you want to make in a sentence or two, how are you going to write a coherent post?
I took this name from something we do in my creative writing classes at the Writers Studio in New York. As part of every assignment, we have to write a preamble: a few sentences at the top of the page mentioning what we intended to do, including the kind of narrator, tone, and mood. When other students critique your work in class, they’re holding it up to this model and evaluating whether you achieved your aim, focusing on craft, not whether they like your main character.
Repeat Yourself (Within Reason)
Even if you think you’ve made your point very clearly, it’s worth restating it at the beginning and end of what you’re writing to make sure the reader gets it.
This principle applies across most genres. In documentation, a good tutorial will have a brief introduction to what you’re going to do, then the actual procedure, and finally a way for you to verify that you’ve done the thing correctly. In a blog post, you should introduce what you’re going to discuss in the post, then actually do that, and have a short summary at the end. And so on.
“Repeat yourself” applies at the language level too. One of the best writing tips I’ve ever gotten was to avoid using demonstrative pronouns. Instead of saying “this” or “that,” you should add a noun to spell out exactly what you’re referring to, even if you’ve just mentioned it.
Example:
“We only have two boxes left. To solve this, we should order more.”
Revision:
“We only have two boxes left. To solve this shortage, we should order more.”
Example:
“Click next and enter your credentials when prompted. That will take you to the home screen.”
Revision:
“Click next and enter your credentials when prompted. Successfully authenticating will take you to the home screen.”
This duplication can feel repetitive when you’re writing it, but it won’t feel repetitive to your reader—it’ll make your writing clearer and easier to follow.
In summary: when editing, look for ways that you can restate your point, clarify, or provide closure for the reader.
Simplify
When I edit someone else’s work, my number one quest is to remove words. Eliminate the fluff. Are there constructions that can be shortened? Any extraneous words that don’t add to the meaning of the sentence?
Example:
“You will need to run this script.”
Revision:
“Run this script.”
Example:
“You can aid in readability by making sure that the names of things properly communicate what they do.”
Revision:
“Make sure the names of things communicate what they do.”
Other ways to simplify:
-
Use the imperative mood
Example:“You should save the file to your home directory.”
Revision:
“Save the file to your home directory.” -
Avoid ‘of’ and ‘for’ clauses
Example:“The manager of the team responsible for marketing”
Revision:
“The marketing team’s manager” -
Split long sentences
Example:“Due to the Acme project which just completed a major milestone of having all non-staging servers running in the Foobaz environment, we now see build times of sub-10 minutes which were previously taking over an hour when running with the XYZ plan.”
Revision:
“The Acme project recently completed a major milestone: all non-staging servers are now running in the Foobaz environment. Builds now take fewer than 10 minutes to complete. This change is a significant improvement, as builds on the XYZ plan previously took over an hour to complete.”
-
Use commas properly
Example:“If you’re looking for me I’ll be in my office.”
Revision:
“If you’re looking for me, I’ll be in my office.”
Eliminate Passive Voice
Passive voice obscures who or what is performing the action. Rewriting a passive construction to be active almost always makes what you’re saying clearer.
Example:
“The fire alarm was pulled and the building was evacuated.”
Revision:
“The fire marshal pulled the alarm and the employees evacuated the building.”
Don’t Use Adverbs
Adverbs often make writing weaker and less specific.
Example:
“He laughed loudly.”
Revision:
“He laughed with the kind of booming abandon that made the whole restaurant turn around and look.”
Don’t Assume Knowledge
Spell out acronyms, provide definitions, and link to further reading.
Example:
“This chart shows the TTFB for our website over the past week.”
Revision:
“This chart shows the time to first byte (TTFB) metric for our website over the past week.”
Be Aware of Your Tone
Be consistent—colloquial or formal, but not both.
Example:
“We were really into this new framework that we found for like a minute or two, but the metrics captured by the system do not correspond precisely enough to our investigative goals to be useful.”
Revision:
“We were initially enthusiastic about the X framework, but we found that it did not capture the metrics we were looking for.”
Avoid Jargon and Clichés
Example:
“tl;dr, if you can hack something together by EOD, that would be great.”
Revision:
“Can you deliver a prototype by the end of today?”
Make Use of Whitespace
Break up long paragraphs, use headings, lists, and bold for emphasis.
Conclusion
To simplify what you’ve just read, my editing philosophy can be reduced to two tenets:
- Say exactly what you mean.
- Take out all unnecessary words.
The point of editing is to think about how you’re using language and to make choices that suit your message.