5 editorās secrets to help you write like a pro
1. Sentences can only do one thing at a time.
Have you ever heard a four-year-old run out of breath before she can finish her thought? I edit a lot of sentences that work the same way. You need a noun, you need a verb, you might need an object. Give some serious thought to stopping right there.
Sentences are building blocks, not bungee cords; theyāre not meant to be stretched to the limit. Iām not saying you necessarily want a Hemingway-esque series of clipped short sentences, but most writers benefit from dividing their longest sentences into shorter, more muscular ones.
2. Paragraphs can only do one thing at a time.
A paragraph supports a single idea. Construct complex arguments by combining simple ideas that follow logically. Every time you address a new idea, add a line break. Short paragraphs are the most readable; few should be more than three or four sentences long. This is more important if youāre writing for the Web.
Nouns ending in -ing are fine. (Strong writing, IT consulting, great fishing.) But constructions like āI am running,ā āa forum for building consensus,ā or āThe new team will be managingā are inherently weak. Rewrite them to āI run,ā āa forum to build consensus,ā and āthe team will manage.ā Youāre on the right track when the rewrite has fewer words (see below).
(If for some insane reason you want to get all geeky about this, you can read the Wikipedia article on gerunds and present participles. But you donāt have to know the underlying grammatical rules to make this work. Rewrite -ing when you can, and your writing will grow muscles you didnāt know it had.)
4. Omit unnecessary words.
I know we all heard this in high school, but we werenāt listening. (Mostly because itās hard.) Itās doubly hard when youāre editing your own writingāwe put all that work into getting words onto the page, and by god we need a damned good reason to get rid of them.
Hereās your damned good reason: extra words drain life from your work. The fewer words used to express an idea, the more punch it has. Therefore:
Summer months
Regional level
The entire country
On a daily basis (usually best rewritten to āevery dayā)
She knew that it was good.
Very
(I just caught one above: four-year-old little girl)
You can nearly always improve sentences by rewriting them in fewer words.
5. Reframe 90% of the passive voice.
French speakers consider an elegantly managed passive voice to be the height of refinement. But here in the good old U.S. (or Australia, Great Britain, etc.), we value action. We do things is inherently more interesting than Things are done by us. Passive voicemuddies your writing; when the actor is hidden, the action makes less sense.
Thereās no excuse for teh in anything more formal than a Twitter tweet.
Also, āa lotā and āall rightā are always spelled as two words. You can trust me, Iām an editor.
Easy reading is damned hard writing.
~ Nathaniel Hawthorne
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