Edit 3 times
I’ve been proofreading a long time.
It started with my own school papers. Then volunteer press releases. Then company annual reports, instruction guides, web sites, sales pages. Also, my mum’s important emails. Clients’ writing. My kids’ papers. Oof. That’s a lot of editing.
Some mistakes are easy to catch — they jump out at you. Others take some thinking about. Here’s the secret lesson: you’ll never catch everything in one pass.
Your brain simply can’t keep track of enough ideas and details at the same time. Which means, even if you can proofread quickly, you can’t proofread just once. So build in time, and give yourself a break for needing, to do a few different ‘sweeps’ when you edit.
Edit #1 = the Content Edit
The first time I read a chunk of copy — might be an email, might be a webpage, might be a blog post, might be a chapter — I just read it through, start to finish.
Does it make sense? Do the ideas connect? Are the ideas good; that is, new and interesting? Do I learn something? Does it make me feel something? Is it satisfying? That’s probably the most important one. You don’t always have to learn from what you read. You don’t always have to laugh (or cry). But you should, as a reader, feel… satisfied. Never ever should your reader feel ‘well that’s 10 minutes I’ll never get back again’.
This is the edit to check if the writing fulfills the purpose. If the point of the piece is to build credibility, does it convincingly do that? If the point is to inform, are you providing some insight that your folks can’t just google?
For instance, this post.
My fellow wizened copyeditors already know this; but this post isn’t for them, this post is for business writers who aren’t trained as copywriters but still have to produce compelling, persuasive writing that delivers on their business goals. And I know — from the number of times I’ve explained my editing approach and from the copywriting training I’ve taken — that doing multiple, focused sweeps isn’t common practice for folks. Furthermore I know if you google “how do I edit a document” or “best copyediting practices” you’ll get over two million options and may not want to plow through them. Whereas if you know, like and trust me, then you can just read this post and feel like, okay… that’s helpful. I’ll start doing that from now on.
Edit #2 = the Voice Edit
We’re happy with the ideas, the flow, and the ‘that was a satisfying read’ edit. The meat is good.
Now we want to make sure the voice / writing style / personality / meat sauce is on-brand. When you’re writing your own stuff you’re ahead of the game. You probably, pretty naturally, sound like yourself. But we all trip up. Sometimes I get a little stuffy and academic and need to loosen up. When I edit my own work for Voice, I cut up too-long sentences; I replace weird words that popped into my head while writing and find better synonyms; I read it out loud to I look for places that could warm up with an aside (which feels like a private little message for your reader… how friendly!).
If you’re editing someone else’s work, like your CEO’s or your business partner’s, you want to make sure their writing is clear, but you can’t just rewrite everything in your own words.
Here’s my filter when I edit other writers: I never want them to sound unintelligent. Obvious mistakes erode an expert’s credibility and clarity. So if there’s a piece littered with ‘Hey babe’ and ‘y’all’ and ‘OMGs’… that’s not my style, but there’s no good reason to edit it out. If their style is short, punchy, incomplete sentences, I’ll probably leave them. As long as it’s clear that the sentence fragments are intentional and made as a style choice, and not because the writer doesn’t understand basic sentence structure. Punctuation should help rather than hinder (which is why no set rules for me around the Oxford comma — that’s a writer’s style thing), nouns and verbs need to agree, and tenses need to be consistent. Otherwise, as long as there’s nothing that stops a reader dead in their tracks thinking ‘that’s wrong. Is that wrong? I’m going to look it up,’ then even if I would structure the sentence a different way or use a different word… I do everything I can to keep the writer’s voice intact. The goal is a clean, clear, satisfying read without something wrong or so totally bizarre that it breaks your reader’s attention.
Edit #3 = the Typo Edit
On your final pass, you’re just looking for small mistakes: spelling errors, missing punctuation, formatting problems, inconsistencies in capitalization etc.
A.I. like spellcheck and Grammarly help, but they’re not always right. Canadian, British and American spellings differ and writers should choose, intentionally, which they want to use. I’ve found that alot of grammar apps are terrible for ‘fixing’ sentences by stripping personality out of them, insisting that fewer words are always better, and that “super interesting” is not a legitimate option. And, while I’m on the subject, for an application that’s supposed to be learning, when will A.I. figure out that I’m never going to replace “need to” with “must” and just give up on that suggestion?!
My brain can’t hold a million things at the same time; similarly, it can’t sweep for Content, Brand Personality and Typographic details all at the same time. So the practical approach to editing for me has been sticking to these rules:
Don’t expect to catch everything in one read-through; give yourself grace and time to do at least three.
Stay focussed on one issue at a time. Once you abandon critiquing for ideas and get tangled up in spelling and punctuation, you forget what you were looking for. Keep the blinders on as best you can for each sweep.
If you’re editing others’ work, your job isn’t to rewrite, it’s to improve. Choices that eat into the clarity of the piece or credibility as an intelligent expert need fixing. Things you would choose to put a different way, do not.
And be clear, when you ask someone to read through your piece, what kind of edit you want them to do. If you’ve worked on the ideas, flow and structure of the piece and you’re really not open to reworking those things, tell them! Ask them to catch typos, or to check your grammar, but not to worry about the content unless there’s something truly problematic. Because we editors will always find something to change, move or re-word. We can’t help ourselves. It’s the red ink that runs through our veins.
Book a half-day writing sprint if there’s something you’re ready to send out and you’d feel better having a well-trained, second set of eyes go over it. (No red pen… just helpful suggestions!)