I think a man turns into a writer
by editing his own texts.
—Imre Kertesz
You can write a book about editing. Several billion people have. The best was written a hundred years ago by the man who immortalized spiders and pigs in the classic children’s book Charlotte’s Web. (With help from his pal Strunk.) I think of Anne Lamott’s Bird by Bird as a by-now-classic (and hilarious) writing guide, but it also offers keen insights on editing.
And—surprise!—lots and lots and lots of bloviators like myself have, well, bloviated about it online. Exclusively about that topic—nothing about bugs or bunnies or writing love letters or my Aunt Jane. Just editing and its many branches.
SubStack in particular—the entity that publishes this newsletter—has scores of publications specifically about editing and writing. See an outstanding example at The Standards Department.
But over here in my neck of the forest, I focus on tips for people who do not consider themselves writers or editors but who sometimes need (or want) to write or edit documents. Managers, task-oriented team members, wage earners asking for a raise. People who want to help animals or the unhoused, promote their kid’s cookie sales, help their bride-to-be friend write her wedding invitations, double-check their bowling club’s pot-luck announcements, develop band’s concert publicity. And people at work (or elsewhere) who write things needing written because there is nobody else to do it, who have figured out what works but who might like to learn more.
(Please note: I am not talking about book editing or film editing, two entities about which I know nothing. This publication advises on words for periodicals, one-time projects, and other ephemera, printed or digital.)
Future issues will zoom in on specific tips for various types of editing. This issue introduces the concept of editing. It’s a skill that will serve you well, whatever you do for a living, because it will help you communicate whether you are editing a work memo you wrote, your soulmate’s resume, or a brochure your neighbor wrote for a community fundraiser.
Editors do multiple tasks at multiple levels with whatever project they’ve been handed. Names for each and descriptions of what they do vary, but here’s my version.
Manuscript editors plunge in, elbow-deep, yanking out buried ledes, reorganizing sections to structurally improve the flow, splicing paragraphs that go off onto side trips, excising or revising sections that blossom new ideas 85 percent into the document. They remove cliches, dead phrases, passive verbs, vague language, grammatical errors. They smooth out words, sentences, or topics that ill fit the tone or focus of the rest of the work, the bolts sticking out of the neck of Frankenstein’s monster. (They also remove strained metaphors like the one in that previous sentence.)
This particular task annoys writers no end. It also takes time and clear-headed, focussed brain energy, and possibly courage depending on a given writer’s temper. Depending on the circumstances, you might or might not do most or all that this level of editing can entail. You’ll need to balance your desire for, say, a well-written office memo penned by your boss against your desire for, say, continued employment. (There are ways of improving writing without risking your job; I’ll get into that.)
Editors also fact-check. Even an interoffice memo can contain errors about facts, those things we used to care about before truth became subjective and reality melted into the grotesque Dali-esque world we live in today. For example, because of the Colosseum-sized egos of past emperors plus a bunch of astronomical business that my brother could explain to you but that I cannot, dates do not consistently align with the same days of the week year after year.
Thus, if we’re talking about 2024 and the memo reads, “The annual meeting will take place on Thursday, March 15,” you will need to ask your boss if she meant Friday, March 15, or Thursday, March 14. Or, much better for your career, you will find the person who schedules meetings and ask him directly. Then you will correct it on the document yourself and impress your boss with this easy yet non-threatening correction.
And, vitally, editors proofread, unless they work in a place large enough to have staff dedicated specifically to proofreading. Although proofreading is not the same as editing—see above for only two of myriad distinctions—this is an essential job, whoever does it, and good proofreaders are golden. I have worked with many assistants (in the bad old days referred to as secretaries) who were better at proofreading than anybody else in the building—who were frequently better at everything than anybody else in the building.
Proofreaders provide the last line of defense in the flow of a document’s life. All other editing happens before proofreaders step in. But believe me, they still have plenty to catch. Proofreaders find typos, extra spaces, style or content inconsistencies, misspellings, peculiar font changes, and errors outside of the purview of fact-checkers—if, for example, a memo refers to Graph 2 but the only graphs on the page are labeled A and B. Or a caption provides four names but there are five people in the picture. Or the last letter of the memo’s heading—in its big giant glaring 48-point font—is missing, despite the hoards of eyes that looked at that heading ahead of them. Proofreaders also check links and attachments.
But in addition to keen eyes for these kinds of bugs, good proofreaders also have antennae that tingle energetically at anything amiss, whether it’s a fact or a change in tone or a weird U-turn in the content’s overall direction. They are like your annoying cousin or little sister who is always right and enjoys telling you so, but what can you do? She is always right.
Each of these (and other) editing tasks require different head spaces. If you are editing the document’s structure and clarity, you don’t worry too much about the typos or even the misspellings. You focus only on holding up the whole block of text at once to check it for balance, consistency, flow, logical progression—a pillow with no lumps in it.
Fact-checking, for some, is probably the most fun. You don’t have to think about the language; just make sure that what it’s saying is true and accurate. If the memo has a sentence noting the year the Hoover Dam was built, you just make sure that the year cited is in fact the year it was built. (And then you go down a rabbit hole about why it was built, what the land was like before it was built, who was running the country at the time—people, there will be a quiz—and how, exactly, dams work, anyway.) You don’t have to worry about why the Hoover Dam is showing up in a memo about an annual meeting. (Although, hey, extra points if you do.)
Proofreading focusses on the detailed stuff summarized above; to proofread, you turn off the part of your brain looking for structural concerns or the accuracy of that sentence citing the year the Hoover Dam was built. You focus on making sure that if the name of a cited department head has two Ls in the third paragraph, it also has two Ls when it appears again in the last. But a good proofreader with tingly antennae will also flag that sentence about the Hoover Dam. Not because there’s anything wrong with it per se, but because it clearly shouldn’t be there. (Maybe the manuscript editor needs to be fired.) A good proofreader will remember that no, actually, that department didn’t exist a decade ago and the woman with two Ls in her name was actually over in marketing at the time.
Most important, a good proofreader—or really, whichever hat you wear, depending on your situation, which might very well mean you wear them all—is never afraid to ask dumb questions. Maybe you don’t ask your boss; maybe you ask a colleague or look it up online. But if you don’t know, or you think you know what the writer is trying to say but aren’t sure, chances are other readers will have the same concerns.
In-house acronyms and jargon: I am looking at you. “Everybody uses it” is not an acceptable attitude to have about these ugly creatures. What about new employees? New (or even longtime) board members? The press? People reading the archives in the library’s business section 30 years from now?
Beyond giving clarity, spelling out an acronym on first reference is also a sign of professionalism. This memo might only be read by the 12 people in your little nonprofit, but it is as important as a press release from POTUS (the President Of The United States). Maybe all dozen employees at AAA know that it stands, of course, for Antique Auctioneers Association, but maybe there is that oddball temp in accounting who wonders why the company newsletter keeps talking about the American Automobile Association.
Macro and micro editing and layers of strata in between—your work (or home) situation might require that you perform all of the above. In subsequent issues, I’ll offer more details—and links—to help you with these and other levels of the exciting world of editing.
Lagniappe: Here’s a word for you: Typo. You know what it means: an error (as of spelling) in typed or typeset material.
But did you know that its first known use was in 1878? Tons of other words gave birth that year, among them flapdoodle, Lapsang souchong, and yum-yum.
Thanks, Annie, for this wonderfully worded article--something I took in eagerly, since I'm getting back to writing my book. Yes, it all applies to revising a book, too.