Eight-Step Editing

• Systematically improve your own writing
• Break the editorial process down into a series of manageable tasks
• Improve the readability of your documents
• Understand the way people read today

Part 1: Reduce the effort required of the reader
• Step 1: Shorten sentences. Break up long sentences and improve the document’s fog index.
• Step 2: Take out the trash. Remove meaningless and unnecessary phrases—the verbal ticks that permeate writing.
• Step 3: Deflate fat words. Eliminate many of the accretions—prefixes and suffixes that have been grafted onto shorter root words—and watch the words sparkle.
• Step 4: Reduce negatives. Remove the negations that add a layer of opaqueness to a document.

Part 2: Improve energy levels
• Step 5: Eliminate the equations. Raise the energy level in a document by looking for and eliminating unnecessary use of the verb “to be.”
• Step 6: Activate the passives. Use active transitive verbs to increase energy and vitality in a document.

Part 3: Help the reader’s thought patterns
• Step 7: Lead with strength. Find the sentence, paragraph, or illustrations that best grabs the readers’ attention and move it to the beginning.
• Step 8: Tune up topic sentences. Start a new paragraph every time you shift to a new point of view to keep the thread of meaning flowing within a document.

There are no prerequisites for this course.

All those who edit their own writing and help colleagues edit theirs. Note: this course does not teach the mechanics of editing, i.e., spelling, grammar, or punctuation but rather teaches an approach to editing.