How and why to edit text: a guide with examples

2024 Author: Malcolm Clapton | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 03:44

It is useful to know for everyone who wants to write clearly, euphonious and competently.

Communicating with the participants of the writing courses, I noticed that some are faced with a problem: how to remove water, to give a clear structure and form to the material. At the same time, the literacy level of the authors also suffers.

I will share with you the editing techniques and ideas that I use when I write texts. I will back everything up with examples.

I must say right away that the instructions are not suitable if you write in the freewriting genre or keep a personal diary. It is for texts that other people will read. Go.

Why edit at all

Like Igor Nikolaev, I single out five reasons:

• Euphony: changing the order of words, working on the rhythm and dynamics, replacing expressions typical of the colloquial style, removing stamps and bureaucrats.
• Brevity: better short and capacious than long and blurry.
• Truth: the text should contain only verified facts. Or specify the data source.
• Literacy: checking punctuation, spelling, syntax, correcting typos and everything else that violates the norms of the Russian language.
• The pain that love died. Actually, no, the fifth reason is pause: you need to separate the stages of writing and editing to give yourself a break from the material, and the material from you.

Techniques logically follow from the reasons for editing. Let's analyze them in more detail and go from the last point to the first, from simple to complex.

What good writing needs

1. Pause

Have you heard Hemingway's phrase: "Write drunk - rule sober"? First thing to know: Hemingway never said it. He loved cats and drinks, but he never wrote drunk, his granddaughter confirms this. The quote belongs to the hero of the novel "Ruben, Ruben" by American author Peter De Vries. However, the phrase is so popular that dozens of articles on the Russian and foreign Internet are devoted to it. It doesn't matter who the author is, the main thing is the meaning.

The creative and critical processes should be separated. As you write, stay in the flow, while thoughts and ideas are spinning in your head, do not hold yourself back. The very process of writing, if you really like it, is intoxication.

When finished, move the text away from you. Have a "day of silence", don't touch it, step back. Why is this needed? While you are writing, emotions play brightly in you, each sentence is filled with intonations, everything seems important and necessary. In other words, you are attached to the text. The main point of the pause is to break this connection. To approach the editing objectively, you need to forget that you wrote the text, you need to edit with an open mind: the way you would edit other people's texts. Be sober.

Pull yourself back every time you notice that you slow down, return to a paragraph and pick something, change it, choose a better option. Go to the end of the text and continue.

If you have deadlines and deadlines, then immediately include time for pauses in your work schedule, do not neglect them. Otherwise, there is a great risk of handing over low-quality material. Write first - write with all your might - and then be sure to pause. Choose the duration according to your inner feelings: someone needs a couple of hours, someone needs weeks. It is impossible without a break.

Well, now you can stop and pour some tea.

2. Literacy

Submitting misspelled text for publication means disrespecting the reader. And you will lose credibility in the eyes of a literate audience. The text must be released clean and tidy, to every comma and letter.

I divide the errors into:

• typographic - typos and other keyboard errors, incorrect placement of dashes, spaces, quotation marks, and so on; is solved by repeated reading and knowledge of these very rules;
• spelling - spelling; can be checked online or in Word;
• punctuation - the placement of punctuation marks, a sore spot for Internet writers and bloggers; can also be checked online or in Word;
• tautologies - inappropriate repetition of words of the same root; re-read carefully and replace with synonyms;
• syntactic - the connection of words in a sentence; some errors can be found by online services and Word, but a person will always check better.

Reading misspelled text is a pain. If you can admit that a high level of literacy is not about you, then there is no need to despair and quit writing. Literacy is more of a technical aspect of writing than a creative one. Your audience is primarily interested in the topic and use of the text. And yet you should not rely too much on services, they are far from a person.

Where to check the text:

• built-in check in MS Word: crude, but works;
• languagetool.org;
• textis.ru;
• advego.com;
• online.orfo.ru;
• "Online fix".

These services work with text very superficially: they can evaluate typos and spelling, but checking words for meaning is beyond their capabilities. In the screenshot below, the text that I specially wrote with errors and checked on all sites. There are 12 mistakes of all stripes, but all the service produces is an error in the word "croissant" and the beginning of a sentence with a lowercase letter. Do you still trust machines?

Typography is a whole art dedicated to elegant and logical design. If you want the text to look solid, bookish, and not like you threw a note on the way to work without looking, then study the rules, it's not difficult. Excellent materials (yes, this is Artemy Lebedev himself) and a resource on the topic:

• Screen Typography;
• "Dash, Minus and Hyphen, or Traits of Russian Typography";
• Typographer Muravyov - the main site has a demo mode in which you can convert your text to typographically correct (and get the HTML code of the text to be inserted into the site).

The situation is better with tautologies. The Fresh Look service will help you not to repeat yourself. Throw text into it, play with the settings and start processing. I prefer the increased length of the context so that words are less frequently repeated. Here's a screenshot with an example:

Life hack. If you write in text editors like Word, then use the built-in search (shortcuts Ctrl + F in Windows or Command + F in macOS). For example, my problem was the pronoun "this" and its derivatives. In order not to clutter up the text with tautologies, I did a search for "et" throughout the document, words with these letters were highlighted, and I reworked phrases to remove repetitions. Or just throw it away and replace it with a dash.

Syntax errors are difficult to find with services. Something similar exists in Word: the 2016 version of the editor underlines incorrect word connections in blue, and it does the same with commas and spaces. Spelling errors and unfamiliar words - in red. But you always need to be careful: Word does not understand everything and adequately evaluates it. For more information on syntax (this is a too broad topic for one article) read Ilyakhov and Sarycheva in "Write, shorten" - I highly recommend it.

The takeaway is simple - improve your literacy rate. The service of Ilya Birman with the basic rules of the Russian language will help you with this. There is a convenient search on the site - check all the points in which you are in doubt.

3. True

All statements and facts in the text that can be verified must be verified! If you are unsure or cannot check, you do not have the right to publish the material.

Forget the phrases “most Russians / men / cannibals”, “many think / saw / know” and stuff like that. If you cannot confirm with numbers, admit that it seems to you that this is from the words of friends and acquaintances or the results of voting among your subscribers in social networks.

Let's link to reputable sources. Don't lie to the reader.

As an editor, you have certain responsibilities. If you take data from any publications as a basis and there are no references to sources in them, do not use this information or check it yourself.

In the beginning I wrote about Hemingway and that he did not own the phrase "write drunk, rule sober."I specifically checked this information, looked in the Russian and English-speaking Internet, because I wanted to check if this is true or just a cliché that is shoved when it is convenient. As a result, I discovered Who said "Write Drunk, Edit Sober"? that the author of the quote is quite different “Write drunk; edit sober. " - Ernest Hemingway, and did not hide behind the authority and cultural significance of Hemingway, but bluntly said that he had never said anything like that.

And this is the way to deal with all the facts. Common knowledge ≠ true. Remember the formula of Dr. House: "Everybody lies"? Let others lie, but you can't. The editor must be honest: in front of himself, the author and the readers.

4. Brevity

Reduce everything you can. Work at different levels: sentences, paragraphs, and whole text.

In a sentence

Remove personal pronouns if it is clear who you are talking about without them. First of all, get rid of the "I", do not yak. In Russian, verbs are conjugated, that is, they change in numbers and persons. Therefore, the reader will always understand who it is about. Instead of "I saw (a)" - just "saw (a)", according to the verb, and so it is clear who the actor is. Occasionally, it is better to leave a pronoun if the sentence sounds bad without it.

Look for the pronoun "this" and its derivatives ("these", "that", "that" and so on) and rephrase the sentence when repeating. The constant repetition of these pronouns is a sign of colloquial speech. Have you noticed that in the previous sentence, after the dash, you could remove "this"? Had.

If you manage to throw out part of the sentence without losing its meaning, throw it away.

The dash is a wonderful typographic character, one of the functions of which is to replace missing words. Example: "She worked at school the first shift, and I worked the second." You don't have to repeat “worked at school on the second shift”: leave the keywords, replace the rest with a dash.

Remember the formula: one sentence - one unit of information. Do not overload sentences, split them for ease of perception. Example: "We were going to go to his grandmother in the village, and on the way Vitya cut his hand." There are two thoughts in one sentence: "the family is going to the village" and "Vitya cut himself." Share such sentences. “We were going to visit my grandmother in the village. On the way, Vitya cut his hand."

In a paragraph

One paragraph - one thought, topic, conclusion. Divide the text into paragraphs to make it easier to read and navigate. In a paragraph, you reveal a thought or situation that you started in the first sentences. If we take the example of the village and Vitya, then the logical sequence is as follows: gathered in the village → Vitya got hurt → went to the hospital → the trip fell through. Describe more fully - that's the paragraph is ready. At the beginning, you declare the topic, in the middle you reveal it, at the end - the conclusion.

In the whole text

A paragraph is a microcosm of a text, with its beginning, middle and end. The same can be said about the text in general. If you had a plan, check to see if you moved away from it. Look for recurring thoughts. Ruthlessly remove such pieces, even if they are large. It makes no sense to convince the reader with repetitions, write right away in such a way as to convey the importance of the thought.

I was afraid to delete passages of the text, because I considered them to be something important, something that would focus the reader's attention, reveal the issue deeper and wider. This is mistake. Everyone will see only the final result, no one will tell you: "Ay-ay-ay, what a great place you cut out, why are you doing that." It is you who choose what to show to the reader. Show the best.

The text has a theme - what you want to say. There is no need for lyrical digressions. Do not deviate aside, for side reflections, let everything be harmonious and logical. Throw away unnecessary things, make the text easier, save time and effort for the reader. It makes no sense to dry it indefinitely: leave the colors and emotions, but the water must be removed.

5. Euphony

I left the difficult for last. Emotional perception of the text is subjective, but a number of rules exist here as well.

Philologists divide speech into oral and written. These are different "genres", and writing is distinguished by greater orderliness, consistency and purity. Unlike oral speech, written speech is never unprepared. When you write, you always know what you are writing about.

The next time you talk to someone on the phone, pay attention not only to what the other person is saying, but also to how they speak. Think, is it possible to record this stream of words and get a beautiful and harmonious statement of thought? Most likely no.

The word order in the sentence is also important. He sets the rhythm. In oral speech, you can break the usual order, since the Russian language allows you to change words in places, and this is also a feature of colloquial speech. The interlocutor will always understand you if the rearrangement of words does not give other meanings to what you are saying.

Bad word order	Good word order
The first mention of keratin appeared in the literature in a scientific work of 1849 …	The first mention of keratin in the literature appeared in a scientific work of 1849 …

What changed:

1. We got away from ambiguity: it was not keratin that was first mentioned in the literature (maybe songs were sung about it, which did not reach us), but the first mention of keratin in writing was found in a scientific work.
2. Separated two constructions with the preposition "in", which made it easier to read.

Dynamics of the text - the pace of the presentation of the material, its emotionality, sharpness, the degree of the reader's involvement. Good text is grabbing, bad writing repels.

Think of a legal contract: endless clauses and subclauses that can go crazy. Sentences are long and complex, difficult to read - you want to quickly sign and throw a sheaf of papers into the bottom drawer of the desk. At the same time, the contract is important: you can get money for money, there is more than enough motivation to delve into it. And all the same, such reading is just fatigue. It's about the choice of words.

To make the text dynamic, introduce a character you can empathize with, whose problems are understandable. Draw a living world, add details and images that will affect the emotions of the reader. In the paragraph above, I did this when I was talking about the contract and the bottom drawer. Everyone has lived a similar experience and can imagine themselves in the place of the hero of the text.

Get away from abstractions, compound and passive forms of the verb, use adverbial and participial expressions less often - add direct action.

Abstraction	Specificity
Oil production and sale is a key factor in the development of the country's economy.	Our economy depends on oil.
Compound verb	Simple verb
Director John S. Baird decided to continue making black comedy films.	Director John S. Baird will continue to direct Black Comedies.
Passive voice	Active voice
The guards took measures to neutralize the robber.	The guards caught and tied the robber.
Participial	No participle turnover
Excited by the evening games, the children could hardly go to bed.	Because of the evening games, the children could not sleep / did not want to sleep.
Participial turnover	No adverbial turnover
Having the same nature with curtain fabrics, roller blinds are harmoniously combined with curtains.	We use curtain fabrics in the material of the roll, so the blinds are harmoniously combined with the curtains.

Stamps and bureaucracy - speech turns that are characteristic of business speech, statements, legal papers and other heavy writing. Crown techniques of clericalism are verbal nouns instead of verbs and rows of nouns in indirect cases. Instead of "we do" - faceless "production", instead of "during work" - "in the process of production of work" and so on. It sounds official, but lifeless and cumbersome.

Stamps and stationery	Simple and clear
In the process of performing work to identify the degree of positive influence of dogs on people, a positive dynamics was found in the innervation of pleasure zones in the human brain with an increase in the number of puppies per square meter of premises.	Scientists realized: the more puppies in the room, the happier.

Get rid of bureaucracy and cliches - these are zombies in Russian literature. Make speech lively and beautiful.

The task of the writer is to simplify the text, to make it easier to convey the essence, and the reader wasted less energy. Therefore, sometimes it takes longer to edit than to write - this is normal. This is the price of good material.

Output

The Internet has given us writing freedom. Everyone can publish their own text, and the choice of sites is huge. High competition, the need for content and the low professionalism of editors have led to the fact that the requirements for the quality of texts have decreased. I have seen ridiculous mistakes in books and online magazines, and I have seen articles that are frankly weak in terms of editing and language on well-known sites like Psychologies, Esquire or Glamor. Even major reputable publications are dropping the bar.

Therefore, all hope is only on the authors themselves. I won't argue: the content decides, and often the content is more important than the form, but editing not only corrects typos and places commas - it helps convey meaning and highlight the essence. A good text is like a diamond: it becomes a diamond only after cutting. This is the purpose of editing.

Bonus: how to develop your editorial skills

Read Russian classics - a treasure trove of language, harmonious word order and style. Avoid tabloid literature - the level of editing in it is often in doubt. At the very least, reduce the proportion of such reading in favor of the classics. Later, as you read more deliberately, you will see all the jambs, and they will not affect your writing taste.

Read poems: Brodsky, Mayakovsky, Rozhdestvensky, of course Pushkin, Lermontov and other classics. Even if you don't like poetry, reading like this can powerfully develop a sense of the writer's rhythm. I guarantee.

Special literature that will help in writing and editing: "Write, cut down" by Maxim Ilyakhov and Lyudmila Sarycheva, "The Living and the Dead Word" by Nora Gal. Believe me, even these two books will help you a lot. Services with the rules of the Russian language are also good help, therules.ru and gramota.ru should become your faithful companions.

A competent writer is not one who does not make mistakes, but one who can check the text and correct it. Therefore, check all the points in which you are in doubt. Gradually, there will be less and less of them.

Writing well is a useful skill, and it's not that hard to develop. The best way is through "", a free and cool writing course from the editors of Lifehacker. A theory, many examples and homework awaits you. Do it - it will be easier to complete the test task and become our author. Subscribe!