Wednesday Writing Style: The Power of Self-Editing
Writing is fun. Editing is. Period. It is necessary. It is painful when someone else edits your manuscript. It can be painful when you edit your own, but lots less embarrassing. You can over-edit, of course, but I think under-editing is more of a problem, especially in the age of insta-publishing that online media has given us. Write a post, press a button, voila: my words are there for everyone. More often than I’d like to admit, I’ve scrolled back through the post I just produced and found a few typos (the most minor grievances) and sometimes just badly stated ideas, confusing sentences, or a total lack of coherence. I knew what I was talking about, but I failed to communicate it.
It’s hard to pause long enough to read through a piece objectively, spot the errors (especially the more subtle ones) and correct them. It’s worth it. A careful read and a few corrections can make a huge difference to the client who receives your piece, or to the readers who frequent your blog.
The basics, of course, are obvious. Correct spelling and right use of punctuation marks are the very basic requirements for decent writing. This includes eliminating those multiple exclamation marks (one is enough, I promise) and using the dash correctly. The second level on the editing ladder is making sure your grammar is correct. No singular nouns with plural verbs. No run-on sentences or fragments (unless you did it on purpose).
As writers - professionals in the field of letters and words - we should know these basics and implement them flawlessly. Most of us do know them. But we get a little rusty. We forget which words to capitalize, or when to use “which” and when to use “that.” More often, we get a little hurried. If someone read our piece back to us, we would catch the mistakes. That’s why we have to implement the self-discipline and force ourselves to take a precious ten minutes and do that editing.
Why does this matter? Because writing as a way to make a living has expanded into worlds that Strunk and White never imagined. The new expansion means that exclusive is out and inclusive is in, and whenever a field becomes more inclusive it becomes less professional. Inclusion is not necessarily a bad thing, but it needs balance. Newcomers to the world of professional writing need to find good examples of brevity, clarity, and correctness. We need to be those examples, and it has to start with the smallest pieces we write.
Go edit something! Make it a good day.
Image Credits: Visentico / Sento on Flickr.
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