Self-Editing: What to Focus on When
A year or so ago, I was a guest on my friend Brad Garner’s podcast, and he asked me to reflect on how technology had changed academic writing and publishing. One of the things I discussed was how technology has changed our habits as writers—or at least for writers of a certain age. For example, when I started my first graduate program in the early 1990s, I had a “portable” (it weighed 23 pounds) Commodore computer with a 5” screen. The idea of trying to edit on that screen was unimaginable. Even going back to make minor corrections in the text was a nightmare. As a result, I think I used that computer like a typewriter—converting handwritten drafts to a file I could print out on a spool-fed dot matrix printer.
Now, I have a 27” monitor that allows me to have two documents or programs open side by side. I rarely compose anything in longhand, and I do a good bit of editing while I write. Large-scale revisions, however, almost always begin on hard copy, with new text written in margins and sometimes carrying over to the back of the page. I bracket sentences and paragraphs, label them with letters, and then jot “insert B here” at another point in the text. Long swooping arrows might indicate the new placement if the text is on the same page. I then transfer these edits to my electronic document, finetuning new text as I add it and reworking transitions to accommodate movement in the text.
This type of revising and editing is less intimidating than it once was because of the technology. I’m less fearful as a writer because I recognize the process’s fluidity and possibility. Still, the writing and editing process is difficult for many writers because they are unsure what they should be looking for and when to tackle specific tasks in the manuscript development process.
Something I picked up as a college writing instructor and later shared in writing workshops is this inverted pyramid showcasing different levels of editing, moving from larger, more holistic changes to the text to corrections at the word or sentence level. I offer it here as a framework for revising, editing, and polishing a manuscript.
Revision
We start with revision, a re-seeing of the text. It is asking at a high level whether you have accomplished what you set out to do when you started writing. Allowing yourself some distance between finishing the first draft and reading with revision in mind will make this process more effective. To that end, you might attend to the following:
Purpose
Does the introduction offer readers a clear roadmap for the article/chapter/ book?
Have the main ideas been sufficiently developed?
Have those ideas been presented in such a way that most readers would be able to summarize your point?
Proportion
How balanced are the sections (or chapters) in terms of depth of treatment or level of detail?
Have you gone into the greatest depth on the most important topics?
Does your conclusion do justice to the piece?
Audience
Have you spent too much time on material readers already know?
Did you leave essential questions about the topic unanswered?
For readers who may be new to the topic or the field, have you defined key concepts and terms and avoided technical jargon where possible?
Organization
Have you clearly stated a claim or research question?
Are your ideas developed in a pattern that readers will recognize?
If you have suggested you will address ideas in a specific order, have you followed that order?
How effectively have you used headers and transitions to help readers move through the piece?
Content
Have you fully developed and supported your ideas with adequate reference to the literature or concrete examples?
Are the sources cited current and relevant?
Do the title and headings accurately forecast the content?
These questions suggest a few key actions associated with revision: (1) adding new material, (2) reorganizing material to make its presentation more effective, and (3) cutting material that may not be serving your argument or your reader well. I think the last of these is the most challenging for writers. It’s disheartening to think about deleting a paragraph or a whole manuscript section, especially if you have invested a lot of time and energy into its development. So, what I do myself, and what I suggest for my coaching clients, is create a new document and move any larger sections of text that I have marked for deletion into that new file. Offloading it into a separate file allows me to move forward with revising with less anxiety because that material is just a few mouse clicks away should I decide I want to put any of it back (I rarely do).
Editing
Once you have tackled large-scale changes to the manuscript, you are ready to move on to editing. To be sure, there is some overlap between revising and editing. For example, you may address organization, transitions, and clarity in both, but when you edit a piece, you manage these at the word and sentence level rather than the manuscript level. One of my favorite approaches to editing is Richard Lanham’s paramedic method, a set of strategies designed to refine academic writing to make it more concise and engaging. I have written about this elsewhere, so I won’t address it here in detail.
A major stumbling block for some writers is that they begin editing too soon. Too much attention to issues of style and correctness early in the writing process can cause them to freeze up, becoming paralyzed by focusing on perfectionism. Other writers may lose momentum or essential ideas because they have focused too much on tidying things up when they should have been getting words on the page.
Proofreading
The final stage or level of editing involves identifying and fixing problems related to spelling, grammar, and punctuation. Here, you will also want to attend to any stylistic conventions imposed by the publisher or disciplinary community. In 1988, Robert Connors and Andrea Lunsford cataloged the 20 most common grammar errors among undergraduate writers (Andrea and Karen Lunsford updated the study in 2008). The number but not the kind of errors differ when I compare my professional editing work to papers from undergraduate students. Typical errors involve comma and other punctuation issues, vague pronoun references, unnecessary shifts in verb tense, subject-verb agreement, and dangling or misplaced modifiers, among others.
It’s worth bookmarking the list of errors and their explanations and using it as a proofreading checklist before turning in a manuscript. I’ve also found that running my manuscript through Grammarly helps me easily catch and correct many of these errors. While I try to fix mistakes when I see them, I don’t usually focus on this level of edit until very late in the writing process. After all, there isn’t much point in spending the time and energy to clean up text that you will ultimately end up cutting or rewriting.
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