Writing is a skill that takes practice. It also takes time. Putting your words on the screen is neither the first nor the last step in the process. Here, we’d like to talk a bit about some tools that can help you get from a first draft to a final masterpiece.
Yes, your writing process should include editing as a necessity. The writing process is hard, and editing may be even harder. But if you want to sound competent and keep your readers’ attention, it’s important to make sure you’ve said what you meant to say. When you edit, you’re checking to be sure you included everything, that it’s interesting, and that there aren’t distracting errors in your content.
How should you go about the process of editing, though? Here are some tips based on what we’ve found effective.
How’s Your Grammar?
We prefer to do a computerized grammar check before doing a manual check. This way, we fix the most glaring errors without much effort on our part. There are three tools we like to use. And we’ll present them in order.
Hemingwayapp
This free site gives some important basic information about your content. For some issues, it will also give suggestions about how to improve it.
Hemingwayapp lets you know the reading level of your content. In general, we shoot for a sixth- to seventh-grade level for basic articles. For more technical pieces, a tenth- or eleventh-grade level is fine. Ultimately, it depends on your audience. We prefer the lower level because it’s what we get from most newspapers and popular magazines.
This site will also let you know if you use too many adverbs or if you’ve abused the passive voice. Both can make your writing sound weak.
Words that have simpler alternatives will be marked, too. Finally, you’ll be able to easily find sentences that may be hard to follow. While you don’t have to get rid of them all, you don’t want to overdo it, either.
Grammarly
After we’re done with the suggestions in Hemingwayapp, we move to Grammarly. This online tool gives even more suggestions. There’s some overlap, but for the most part, it checks different things.
Grammarly’s free version looks at “correctness” and “clarity” in your writing. It gives suggestions for how to fix punctuation, spelling, wordiness, and other issues.
The paid version also looks at how your delivery and engagement are. That is, they have more to do with the article sounding interesting rather than just being grammatically correct.
You do have to be careful here, sometimes. Grammarly will frequently suggest that your writing “could” be wrong. But that also means it could be correct. Sometimes, it simply highlights potential issues without understanding the context. So a careful reading is important. Never automatically accept a suggested change!
WordCounter
Repetition can lead to boredom. We use WordCounter to do exactly what it says it does – count words. But it’s not simply a count of the number of words in your text. The other two tools can give you that. Instead, WordCounter will tell you how many times you use each word in your text. It will also list two- and three-word phrases.
It doesn’t count common words like “the”. Instead, it looks at words that could be keywords in your text.
Of course, there are many words that you’ll often repeat. You can’t avoid talking about the subject of your article! But there are also times you’ll want to vary your vocabulary a bit more.
This is no exact science. There is no “right” amount of times to use a word or phrase. However, you can learn to make this a good guide for when it’s time to pull out the thesaurus.
Wait
Yes, wait. At least for us, we find it important to separate ourselves from the text for a while before doing more. If we re-read it too soon, we often miss things. We know what we meant to say and sometimes think we said it – even when it’s not there.
When we come back to the draft after a few hours or the next day, we have a clearer perspective on it And we usually find much more that needs adjusting!
Edit By Hand
Only after this waiting period do we try to edit manually. This requires re-reading the document to make sure everything sounds right. Does it make sense? Does it flow?
We go back to our outline here and compare it to the text. Sure, the outline comes first and guides your writing. But pulling it out again now will help make sure you met all your goals and touched on all the key points. It also helps make sure we didn’t get sidetracked on other topics.
The automatic checks we already did were a big help, but nothing beats reading the article. Keep making changes until you’re happy with it.
Once that’s done, we pass it through Hemingwayapp and Grammarly again to see if we introduced any new errors.
Finally, whenever possible, we ask someone else to read it. Even the most famous authors have editors that check their writing. A fresh set of eyes is an enormous aid, especially if we can trust the person to be honest in their criticism.
Adding Links
If you’re publishing on your blog (or anywhere online, really) it’s always good to have links. They could point to other articles on your site or external sources.
Be sure to choose good places to add the links. Avoid placing them in the first paragraph or two. After that, place them where they’re most convenient to the reader – and where the reader will easily understand what they’re clicking on, too.
Formatting
Finally, it’s time to upload and publish your article. This doesn’t take much more than cut-and-paste if you’re using a content management system like WordPress.
There isn’t a lot to do here. However, be sure to preview your article. Look for “walls of text” – long paragraphs with no breaks in them. These can be hard to read on-screen. Try to break them up into two or more paragraphs instead.
You could do this in your word processor, too. But often, the format on your blog is distinct enough that some paragraphs may seem fine as you write but look too long on your site.
Conclusion
Careful editing of your blog helps you fashion more interesting and more professional content. Be sure to review what you write carefully. Clear, concise material will keep your audience more engaged – and keep them coming back!