Editorial Advantage - Editorial Advantage Self Help

Some things to keep in mind when . . .

Writing

The conscientious writer's first responsibility is to communicate clearly to his or her audience. A concise document is easier to digest and doesn't distract the reader with unrelated digressions, while a meandering document frustrates the reader because the central idea becomes lost in a sea of words.

Assuming that your reader is unfamiliar with your ideas or your subject is a good approach, even when your reader's background and knowledge are the same as your own. Ensuring that your thoughts are understood usually means fewer words, not more; an organized flow of ideas, not a deluge; a concrete style, not a flowery one.

Today, readers have limited time to devote to even well-written articles or reports. Writers who forget this will lose those readers on the first page, if not the first paragraph. Ideas that are clear to the writer, if not expressed with clarity, will be as clear as mud to the reader.

Copy Editing

Experienced copy editors have a solid grasp of commonly accepted editorial practices, and they know how and when to apply them. These practices, also adhered to by careful writers, are described and explained in a number of authoritative reference works. These works include The Chicago Manual of Style; Words into Type; Strunk and White's The Elements of Style; The American Heritage Dictionary; Follett's Modern American Usage; Bernstein's The Careful Writer; and the AP, New York Times, and Washington Post style guides.

For literary and creative work, a good copy editor knows how and when to bend or break these same guidelines and rules.

Proofreading

Proofreaders don't read the way everyone else reads. They know that they're not in a foot race, and that accuracy is their priority. They read at a painfully slow pace, breaking down sentences into words and words into syllables and letters. Reading this way is counter-intuitive and difficult, but it's the only way to achieve accuracy.

Accomplished proofreaders approach all documents with the assumption that those documents contain errors--because almost all documents do. It's a rule of thumb that documents said to require only a "fast final read" are unlikely to withstand a proofreader's scrutiny.

The best proofreaders also recognize that they may have gaps in their knowledge--if they have an inkling that something isn't right, they look it up. They know that guessing is for amateurs.