
How to Edit Your Own Writing - mapgrep
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/07/smarter-living/how-to-edit-your-own-writing.html
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bluenose69
I often advise students to start with a sort of flowchart of ideas, instead of
an outline. This consists of boxes with ideas, keywords, phrases, or diagrams,
connected with arrows in a sequential order.

When the student pitches the plan to me, I start by looking at the items in
the boxes of the flowchart, to make sure they are all relevant and that no
relevant things have been missed. So far, this is no different than looking at
a bullet list in a conventional outline. But the next step is the key: if the
diagram has A->B->C, for example, I propose some other ordering and ask the
student why that couldn't work. And I also ask whether we actually _need_ that
B in the middle.

This directed-graph approach can help to reveal a good logical structure for
the overall composition, often saving an great deal of time at a later stage,
where the pieces being moved around are not just phrases or ideas, but rather
paragraphs, sections, or even chapters.

Quite often, the best way to come up with a diagram of this type is to explain
the goal of the written work to someone else, drawing the diagram as part of
the explanation. If the listener says "I don't see how you got from that idea
to the next" then the diagram might need another box.

The other hint I give to students is to keep updating this flowchart as the
writing is being done, because the act of writing can so often uncover things
that were not envisioned at the start.

PS. when I say "my student", I include myself, for the teacher who is not also
a learner is missing an opportunity.

~~~
adelHBN
Do you give this advice for long, literary pieces as well, such as a novel?
Also, would be wonderful if you could share some examples.

~~~
mettamage
Seconding examples. Would watch you on YouTube if you happen to make videos as
well to learn more about this.

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julienchastang
Use "chat" instead of "communicate"? Really that does not sound like good
advice to me.

Here is a tip that's really helped me over the years. Have the computer read
highlighted sections back to you (via Accessibility features on MacOS, for
example). I do this so often on my Mac that I have a keyboard shortcut for it;
ctrl-esc. I use this feature all the time including for the composition of
this comment. It is amazing to me the number of mistakes you can catch in this
manner that you would not catch otherwise. The reason is your brain takes the
same mental shortcuts in reading aloud (as the article recommends) as when you
write.

~~~
adelHBN
What a great idea. Does Microsoft have something like this?

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tomjen3
Microsoft Word does. It also has a good grammar engine that fixes many of the
issues immediately.

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girzel
This was fairly useful, if not amazingly insightful.

I think that "give yourself some space" is by far the most helpful tip. At any
given moment, in any given state of mind, you'll only ever have an imperfect
perspective on what it is you're trying to say, and how well you've succeeded
in saying it.

Waiting until you're in a different frame of mind, then revisiting the piece,
is the best way of "layering" your own ideas – filling in gaps, considering
new perspectives, coming to new realizations.

I think it's something that has to be done with every piece of writing. You
either get someone else to look at it and do it for you (if you don't have
time), or let enough time pass that you have (in a sense) become "someone
else" yourself, and read again.

~~~
OliverJones
Exactly. For me the tl;dr of this article is:

If you don't have a person to edit your stuff, read it over with fresh eyes.

This goes for anything from late-night texts to 100K - word books.

~~~
crb3
I get this by writing in minimal-markdown text, then pushing it to HTML and
reading it in a browser. The reformatting breaks the prior spacial
relationships of the words; swapping the text editor for the browser framing
breaks the context.

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potench
My professor deducted a point for every instance of the verb “be” in my papers
in college. Refactor “was, is, are” out of your sentences and you’ll see your
writing improve - it forces you to think very critically about the subject of
each action in a sentence and your writing will sound more precise for it.

~~~
Angostura
“To is, or not to is? That is the question “

~~~
bryanrasmussen
now you're using too much is.

To exist or not, I ask myself.

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syrak
I've learned quite a lot about editing from "Style: Lessons in Clarity and
Grace." It presents some tricks to restructure and improve the flow of
sentences, and through that process, to generate the momentum to really think
about what you want to say.

[1]:
[https://www.amazon.com/dp/0134080416?tag=duckduckgo-d-20&lin...](https://www.amazon.com/dp/0134080416?tag=duckduckgo-d-20&linkCode=osi&th=1&psc=1)

~~~
Tomte
I second that.

It has two things that stood out for me:

* It clearly discusses "grammar rules" and "personal style", which helped me locate myself in all this.

* It doesn't just say "avoid the passive voice", but explains when the passive is needed (it has nothing to do with "when we don't want to say who acts", but a lot with "the sentence is easier to understand when X appears at the beginning of the sentence, the easiest way to achieve that is to use passive voice").

Oh, and a third: it has wonderful exercises.

There are many editions of the book (actually there are even three titles, all
with "Clarity" and "Style" in them) – it doesn't really matter which one you
choose.

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Balanceinfinity
best/easiest writing tip 1: You place a square around the subject of the
sentence and a circle around the verb. This ensures you have one (or more) of
each, as opposed to having an implied subject or verb. Then look at how close
they are - the fewer words in between the subject and verb, the clearer the
sentence is. Thus: Joe quickly and unerringly picked the wrong word becomes:
Joe always picked the wrong word

Best easiest writing tip 2: The most important word in the sentence is the
verb - it should always do the heavy lifting. This means that - when possible
- you should avoid the passive voice, but it means much more. When writing,
select verbs that pop. From: Joe walked down the street without direction To:
Joe meandered west.

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iNic
I recommend reading Stephen King's On Writing, it is half writing tips and
half Stephens life story. It is the only Stephen King book I have read (so
far) and it really made me want to write more! He also recommends the elements
of style.

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mxcrossb
One tip I’d like to add that has helped my writing tremendously: read the
sentences you write in reverse order. It basically simulates the taking time
away from what you wrote process.

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farleykr
I used to shy away from editing my own writing. I felt like I couldn’t
possibly make any improvements since I was the person who wrote the writing
that needed editing in the first place. But once you get used to it, the real
fun of writing is in the chance to perfect what you’re trying to say through
editing.

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zanemountcastle
Writing is hard and editing is time consuming. Anyone who went through college
can agree with that.

The problem is that it's often almost impossible to maintain an entirely
objective perspective on your own writing. The most reliable method is always
having a third party give a document an in depth review in order to avoid
sounding stupid.

In fact, a buddy of mine locked in quarantine recently released Edit Mule
([https://www.editmule.com](https://www.editmule.com)) to bridge this gap and
make it easy to get a professional editor to do this. There really is way too
much bad writing out there--hopefully they can reduce it.

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hyperpallium
It is easy to degrade by editing too. There's a flow that comes with the
thought; there's an interchange with the reader that comes with conversation.

It is comforting to think we can be geniuses with time and effort. But the
genius that visits you does not labour.

Not criticizing the content, but the expression in this recent example of
overediting:
[http://paulgraham.com/useful.html](http://paulgraham.com/useful.html) Note a
paragraph comes to life towards the end, that I would guess is transcribed
conversation.

~~~
ghostpepper
The best tip I've heard to preserve flow in editing is to rewrite - not edit.
This is how all editing was done before computers became ubiquitous but you
can emulate the process by printing out your first draft with large line
spacing, manually going through it with a pen and then - and this is the key -
open a new blank document called "Draft 2" and retype it from scratch based on
your printed version.

~~~
hyperpallium
Sounds daunting... yet I used to do this in effect, by writing first draft by
hand, reading and editing there, and then typing up.

Writing by hand, you can also draw arrows for relationships, little diagrams,
mini-drafts etc.

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ghaff
I generally agree with the piece, especially writing as discovery. And I
certainly identify with the opening being hard--in fact, there's a good
argument for putting _something_ there so that you can get on with writing the
rest of the piece. I've sometimes probably spent a decent portion of my total
writing time figuring out a hook/analogy/etc. for the rest of the piece.

The thing that's missing is that you also need another pair of eyes at least
for anything beyond a personal blog post where it's somewhat OK to have
mistakes. Obviously you can't get at least a copy editor for anything but you
basically can't publish even a short book, report, or something like that
without someone else doing a careful read.

~~~
ksd482
"And don’t neglect a second pair of eyes: Ask relatives and friends to read
over your work. They might catch some things you missed and can tell you when
something is amiss."

~~~
ghaff
Fair enough. I missed that near the end. Although I would say that casual
reads by colleagues, friends, etc. tend not to be very careful. If it's
important you probably need to pay someone.

~~~
rubidium
Depends on your friends. I ask my liberal arts onesz

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Ayraa
What made the biggest difference for me was using a text to speech reader to
proofread and edit. You are able to catch a lot of phrasing that looks ok but
sounds wrong or awkward this way.

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Angostura
When I was a journalist we had one rule about proof-reading your own writing
(not the same as editing, I know). That rule was “Don’t”. Always get someone
else to proof the final version

~~~
mapgrep
Are you sure the rule wasn’t “don’t publish something only proof-read by the
author?” The best journalists I’ve worked with do extensive self editing. Then
they file their copy to an editor.

Also, journalists work in a different context than other writers. They write
for publications with people on staff specifically to edit their copy. Someone
writing a blog post, internal company memo, personal essay, documentation, etc
may not have access to a paid editor or time to wait on volunteers. Definitely
a good practice to get someone else to read something you care a lot about or
are getting paid to write. But there are lots of things (arguably!) that fall
short of that.

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ChairmanDog
The ProWritingAid team has made a free course on this
([https://blog.reedsy.com/learning/courses/editing/self-
edit-l...](https://blog.reedsy.com/learning/courses/editing/self-edit-like-a-
pro/)).

It covers technical issues like ticky sentences, excessive pronouns, and
overused words — plus stylistic things.

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kazinator
I understand that things are tough in NYC, but, sorry, this is a low-effort
article with little value; all the recommendations in it are material that
kids learn by around Grade 11 English. (Quite probably, today's teens are all
over online resources like Grammarly, too).

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yarinr
As a non-native English speaker, using a thesaurus is often a great help. I do
have a pretty decent vocabulary, but sometimes the right word just doesn't
come to mind.

Besides using a thesaurus for writing, I occasionally also find it useful for
naming things when programming.

~~~
vikramkr
the danger with that is always that you end up using words that are subtly
inaccurate or that turn your writing into purple prose [0]. For me what really
helped as I picked up english (take this with a grain of salt - this was when
I was very young and so had the benefit of immersion etc, and i would consider
myself fluently bilingual) - what helped me when I learned English was reading
a lot of prose by writers that I really respected and that are considered good
writers. Particularly contemporary writers, so we don't learn to write like
folks from the 1800s. THat helped me learn how words are used in context and
pick up the nuances, but it took a few years of course.

[0]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Purple_prose](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Purple_prose)

~~~
andrewflnr
The way I typically use a thesaurus, and possibly the way GP is describing, is
to use it to remind myself of words whose meaning I know when I see them but
aren't coming to the tip of my tongue. I agree that that understanding comes
from years of reading.

~~~
yarinr
Yeah. That's exactly what I meant in my comment, thanks for clarifying.

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rustybolt
It's funny that in the section that argues against the passive voice, the
passive voice is used almost exclusively. Is the author a bad writer or is not
using the passive voice bad advice?

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weinzierl
The author wrote it in the active but _Alan_ the editor had a strange sense of
humor and turned it into passive voice. So even with the luxury of working for
the NYT and having access to an editor you'd be better off to edit your own
writing;-)

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veeralpatel979
Non paywalled link: [http://archive.is/M4COJ](http://archive.is/M4COJ)

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adelHBN
Writing is editing. I have a site (thepeel.news) and am also writing a novel,
and I see it every time - quality comes out with editing and reditting.

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mauvehaus
Re-write or re-type. Use your laziness as a force for good to cut out
extraneous stuff.

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troelsSteegin
Personally, I think through writing. My first draft is what I write to help me
understand a problem or an idea. That's good for me, but not so good for you.
Useful writing addresses someone else's need. The questions are "who is your
audience?", and "What do they need to know from you?" Writing for other people
is communication. What are you intending to communicate? Technique, as
illustrated in this article, serves that intention.

Cole Nussbaumer Knaflic's book "Storytelling with Data" is a good book on
technical communication. TLDR: it's a process, and it's not about you, it's
about them.

