10 Ways to Edit Better

Whether you’re managing social media, blogging, working out a marketing brochure, or writing a press release, editing is an incredibly important process. The thing to remember is that no phrase or project is too long, short, or “pointless” to ignore revision. Here’s why:

• A typo or grammatical flub makes you look unprofessional.


• Word choice (diction) tends to improve after a revision.


• It makes you rethink what you wrote and find ways to improve.


• Editing trains you to become a habitual self-critic.


• Proofreading can streamline messaging and improve the clarity of a piece.

Your social followers, site visitors, and blog readers love pointing out typos. It’s a point of pride to find one, really, and a professional writer or marketer deserves to be called out because “I didn’t have time to edit” is not an excuse.

To help, I thought I’d share a few of my favorite editing tricks. Some of these are better fits for longer pieces of work and personal projects compared to tweets and brief blog posts.

1. Subtraction, Not Addition

When you go through your work (or someone else’s), always look for ways to make it more concise and shorter. People love to talk, though, which leads to jumbled, overly-written content. Find words that you don’t need (like “that” 90 percent of the time) and cut them.

2. Proofing Out Loud

It may sound silly in an office, but reading out loud is one of the best ways to catch awkward phrasing and poor sentence structure. After enough time, professional writers may develop an internal voice that reads alongside the words they type.

*To really annoy co-workers, try proofing out loud in an unpracticed accent. You’d be surprised how effective this is on both counts.

3. Let the Words Bake

Don’t edit right after you’re finished writing. Get a cup of coffee, go out to lunch, or wait until the afternoon. Writers do this because re-reading something they’ve just written is boring and may cause them to rush through and miss errors.

4. New Eyes

Another go-to editing strategy is to pass a piece onto someone else whether or not that person has editing experience. Writers trade projects all of the time and look over one another’s work to check for errors. If anything, a second pair of eyes could point out some unclear sentences.

5. Print It Out

While not always possible, reading words on paper is another effective proofreading strategy. People tend to skim screens and jump lines. On paper, though, you can follow your words with a red pen and make corrections later.

What do we edit for?

Knowing proofing strategies is only worthwhile if you know what you’re looking for. It’s not all about picking out the you/you’re/your and varieties of “to” as much as editing ensures you communicate a clear, legible message to a reader.

Next time you edit, ask yourself the following questions:

6. Is the style consistent with the intent?

Style refers to the voice, as in persuasive, informative, entertaining, or whatever else you have in mind. A writer’s style leaks into his or her work all of the time. Sometimes, the style doesn’t match the intent of the piece and impresses a disjointed message on a reader.

7. Is the piece structured properly?

Proofing is about structure as much as it is about grammar. While social media snippets don’t require rigorous formatting, blog posts, press releases, and other articles do. Make sure the content is portrayed in a way that is easy to read on a screen and consistent.

8. Is the message clear?

What’s the point of a piece? What are you trying to do with it? A reader should be able to answer this question after reading, of course, which is why it’s helpful to pass your work along to a new set of eyes.

9. Is it appropriate?

Going back to “style,” what you publish needs to be professional, informative, and entertaining at the same time. Throw out corporate jargon, acronyms, emoticons, and other such material that subtracts from the piece.

10. How can I make it better?

Good writers are awesome editors. They constantly judge their work and ask, “How can I make this better?” You should do the same regardless of the length or intent of a piece.

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