We are often asked to copyedit, or edit, pieces of writing for our clients. What we've found is, more times than not, our clients really want us to revise their writing. And that is fine. We enjoy doing it. However, editing and revising are two separate activities, one requiring a great deal more time than the other. So, before we get to our tips, the English teacher in us would be remiss to not clearly define her terms.
Revision is the act of rewriting. Put another way: it is the act of clarifying one's thoughts. Writing is thinking. The two activities are linked. In order to make sure your writing - your ideas - effectively reaches your reader, it must be written, then rewritten, then rewritten, and rewritten some more. Writing is a recursive process. This means that it must go through many cycles before it becomes unified and coherent.
Editing, on the other hand, deals with spelling and grammar. This should be your last step in the writing process. Why? There's no point in editing a first draft if it's going to get overhauled during revision. And it should be. All first drafts suck. Until a piece of writing is organized and clear, editing is a big waste of time. It's an essential step before printing or publishing or sending an email because a misspelled word, or a period in place of a question mark (oh, you know who you are...), doesn't really make you look that great. I'm just saying...people notice that kind of stuff.
Below, for all of you do-it-yourselfers, we have compiled a short list of editing techniques you can use at home (or at the office, or the coffee shop, or wherever you may be writing):
Shout it from the rooftops! Or just read your work out loud. One is less embarrassing... The reality though, unless you're trained in the mechanics of grammar, chances are your eye won't catch all of the mistakes. Your ears, however, can be a great tool. If you read your writing out loud, your ears will pick up sentences that have mistakes. For instance, if you stumble through a sentence, or five, chances are your readers will too. If you read a sentence out loud that doesn't make sense to you, chances are it won't make sense to your readers either. If anything pops out at you, you can rework it. Simple, right?
Use the buddy system. This sounds like common sense, however in the day-to-day hustle and bustle of the business world, many people skip this step. Having a second, or even a third, set of eyes look at your writing, will help make sure pesky grammar and spelling errors are caught before it's too late.
Do it the old fashioned way. Edit on paper, not on your computer screen. Again, this seems like common sense, however many people edit from their computer monitors rather than with a pencil. The computer monitor does not allow you to look at each line in a close-reading manner, which is what is needed when editing.
Bottoms up! Go through your work, sentence by sentence, from the bottom to the top. Take a separate piece of paper and cover every sentence that comes before the one you are working on. Working backwards allows you to see each sentence as it stands on its own, and will often show you where grammar mistakes are hidden.
Make a list of grievances. In other words, keep an error log. If you know you are prone to misspelling certain words, keep a list of them handy as a quick reference. If you are prone to writing in fragments, keep a reminder that you need to go through your writing line by line looking for fragments. Keeping an error log not only helps you edit, but will help you improve your writing skills.
Do you have other helpful editing tips? We'd love to hear about them!
Saturday night we got to spend time with an old friend, and fellow comic-book lover, and went to see Thor in 3-D in Emeryville. 
