Revision and Editing Techniques

Two decades ago I learned One Weird Trick for editing your own writing. Edit **from the end to the beginning of your document**, paragraph by paragraph. I still use it and it still surprises me how well it works. When I get my students to do it, it often amazes them. Try it! Why does it work so well? At least three reasons. A simple one is that you've probably looked at the beginning of your document way more often than the end, so back-to-front editing distributes attention more evenly. When we read front to back, our brains predict what comes next, smoothing over gaps and mistakes. That's especially true with our own writing because we're so familiar with the content — and because many of us hate reading our own writing! Back-to-front editing forces the brain to work more, so we notice more. And it's more fun. And finally, especially in academia, a lot of writing is unnecessarily complicated. That wouldn't be a problem if the reader progressed linearly through the text, maintaining a perfect memory and understanding of everything they've read so far. Back-to-front editing helps us see how jarring the text is to a human reader. The best way to edit your writing is to have someone else do it. The second best way is to put it away for a few weeks before editing it, so the text isn't fresh in your mind. Back-to-front editing is always worthwhile, but especially when the first two options aren't available. I first posted this on Twitter many years ago, before I was on LinkedIn. Many editors confirmed in response that this trick is well known among them. Too bad it isn't more widely known — it shouldn't be only professional editors who benefit from it! Some of the other suggestions: reading your writing out loud (can confirm), having text-to-speech read your text out loud (makes sense), and even changing the font so that it doesn't look as familiar (whoa!) I also learned from the responses that the same thing works for music and even for art—holding a painting upside down lets you spot problems. It’s obvious in retrospect but still awesome that disrupting familiar mental patterns is such an effective and general life hack!

Stop asking AI tools like ChatGPT, Gemini, or Claude to edit and rewrite your marketing copy, emails, or other assets. Instead, use them as collaborative partners to help you improve the quality of your work. Here's how 👇 Ask your AI tool to review your work as the editor you want it to be. Are you looking for copy edits for grammar? Changes to stay on brand? Adaptation for a specific vertical? The perspective of your target persona? Give it specific guidance and the skills to be that exact editor. Then provide all of the appropriate context needed to do a great job. Share your goals, audience, brand guidelines, purpose, and/or whatever else a human would need to know to do a good job on the edits. Now comes the magic - request the AI review your copy for suggested changes. Ask it to give you three things for every edit it suggests:   - The original copy you wrote.   - Its suggested revisions. - The reasoning behind each change it suggested. This method works so much better than just asking the AI to re-write your copy and make it better because when you edit using my before/after/why framework you'll get... 1️⃣. Higher-quality edits When the AI is required to explain its suggestions, it avoids making changes just for the sake of making changes. This leads to more thoughtful, meaningful, high-quality improvements. 2️⃣. YOU stay connected Applying the AI’s suggestions yourself keeps you actively involved. You won’t accidentally become complacent (it's so easy with AI!) and blindly accept poor edits that degrade rather than enhance the quality of work. 3️⃣. Critical thinking helps a lot Understanding the reasoning behind a suggestion helps you decide if you agree with the logic. Even if you don’t love the execution, you can adopt the thinking behind the suggestion and adjust the execution to fit your voice and goals. 4️⃣ . The AI may catch edits you might overlook AI can flag things you didn’t notice, giving you the chance to refine them in your own way. This approach works especially well with tools like Gemini in Google Docs, Copilot in Word, or ChatGPT and Claude in a chatbot environment. While it might take a little longer to apply the suggestions, the payoff in quality is well worth it. You'll get higher-quality results and a deeper understanding of your own work. We talk a lot about AI efficiency gains, but AI isn’t just about saving time. One of the biggest reasons to build AI skills is because it improves the quality - not just the speed - of work. In fact, CMOs whose marketing teams I've trained with AI skills over the last 2 years frequently tell me post-training that they can really see who is actively using AI because of the dramatic increase in the quality of their work (and how much better it is than other people's now)! So if you've been asking ChatGPT to re-write your copy for you, try this method with your next project instead, and see how much better it is!

On Giving Your Paper a Necessary Haircut (a.k.a. Responding to Reviewer Requests to Shorten Your Paper) Every so often, a reviewer will say something like: “This is a strong paper, but it needs to be significantly shortened.” And every time, my initial reaction is somewhere between sorrow & disbelief. I stare at the screen like my daughter’s tiny dog after his first haircut—despondent, slightly violated, & confused about what just happened. You think, But it was perfect just the way it was… wasn’t it? It probably wasn’t. Most of us write too much. We fall in love with our nuance and our careful theoretical framing. So yes, the initial reaction is sadness. But. Trimming a paper, when done well, can actually make it stronger, leaner, and far more impactful. Much like my daughter's little dog post-grooming, once the paper sheds some of its fluff, it’s tighter, more focused, and easier to follow. Which. Given that reviewers, editors, and readers alike are busy, making their job easier makes your work more publishable. So, what do you do when you're asked to cut? Step 1: Let go of the frustration. Seriously. Take a walk. Then come back ready to engage. It’s not personal. It’s structural. Your ideas aren’t being rejected—they’re just being asked to work a little harder in less space. Step 2: Be grateful you're still in the game. This is a revise-and-resubmit, not a desk reject. Cutting means you have a shot. Celebrate that. Many papers don’t make it this far. You did. Step 3: Cut with purpose. This is where the real craft begins. Shortening a paper isn’t just deleting words—it’s strategic rewriting. You need to preserve the argument and improve the clarity. A few suggestions: Prune your literature review. Ask yourself: does this reference directly serve your argument, or is it just showing you read widely? Keep only the citations that carry weight. Example: Instead of listing 12 studies on organizational identity, keep the 3 that set up your research gap. Streamline methods descriptions. If your audience knows the method, you don’t need three paragraphs explaining it. Trust your reader’s knowledge. Use tables and figures wisely. Sometimes, moving lengthy explanation into a figure can save you a page and make the story more readable. Reviewers love clarity. Watch redundancy. If you say something in the intro, do you need to say it again in the discussion and conclusion? Probably not. Get feedback. Give the paper to a colleague with a red pen and the challenge: Help me cut 1,000 words. They’ll be brutal, which is exactly what you need. Final thought: Short papers are the hardest ones to write. They require discipline, structure, and ruthless prioritization. But they often end up being your most cited and clearest work—because people actually finish reading them. So, yes. It’s a haircut. And yes, you may feel exposed at first. But the end result? Sleeker, smarter scholarship. Hang in there—and cut bravely. #academicwriting

An exhaustive editing checklist (from a pro editor that’s on a mission to help people edit with confidence): ⭐️Developmental edits: -Does the narrative jump from A to C without giving the reader B? -Does every example end with a takeaway? -Does it use the most relevant examples/stories/use cases? -Is the information strategically presented and does it align with the chosen content format? -Is the information easy to digest and understand? -Does the content guide the reader through a frictionless journey? -Does the draft follow the outline (if there is an outline)? -Are sections packed with value adds, or do some lack comparatively? -Can readers visualize the concepts and extract takeaways they can emulate? -Does it align my own/my client's ToV/PoV/stylistic preferences? -Does it speak to the correct audience and their experience/awareness level? -Does it include unique, data-driven, experience-based expertise and points? -Does it include strategic CTAs, both subtle and obvious, that motivate readers to complete an action? ⭐️Copy edits: -Are sentences and paragraphs clear and concise? -Is there a logical flow between sentences and paragraphs? -Is it free of filler? -Are sentences written mostly in active voice? -Is it free of redundant words, phrases, or ideas? -Does sentence structure vary? -Are bulleted lists in the same tense (parallelism)? -Are sources original and interpreted correctly? -Is it error-free (no spelling mistakes, awkward spacing, etc.)? ————————— Hope this helps! P.S. I’ll be teaching how to self-edit your social posts (+ much more) in my upcoming cohort in November with Kasey Jones. Hop on the waitlist if you’re keen to grow your platform so you can grow your business 👇

Most "editing advice" over the internet is s**t You've heard it all before: "Take a break and then edit your content."  "Read your content out loud." "View it on a different device." Sure, those tips are good to start with but not to live with! Here is my 3-part editing process that covers everything you need to know - 1) Developmental editing 2) Copy editing   3) Proofreading I tackle them in that order - big picture stuff first, then zeroing in on the details. For the developmental edit, I evaluate: • Does this really answer what the reader wants to know?  • Does it accurately reflect my perspective/stance? • Are all the key points and arguments fully fleshed out? • Is the narrative structure and flow logical? • Is this catering to the right knowledge level? Then I move into copy editing mode to smooth out: • Paragraph transitions and flow • Use of active vs. passive voice • Removing redundancies  • Ensuring I've explained the "why" behind the "what" • Adding clear takeaways throughout Finally, I proofread with a picky eye for: • Spelling, grammar, awkward phrasing • Proper spacing and formatting of the posts The editor's mindset is moving from "this is good for the readers mostly" to "what's missing?" Following these 3 editing stages helps me catch all the big issues and polish the finer points. What does your editing process look like? I'd love to hear your tips and tricks!

Sometimes you're asked to do a medium- or heavy-level copyedit on a novel manuscript, which means you'll be doing more than just the basics of ensuring the ms conforms to style and is free of typos and other errors. You'll also be smoothing out the prose, helping the author fix problems like head-hopping, and deleting info-dumping (the overuse of exposition in a novel). (You may also have similar goals in a line edit.) But newer editors have a tendency to think that "there's a different way to write this" is the same thing as "there's a better way to write this." Those are two different things. To make sure any edit is effective it has to be both (1) an improvement and (2) intended to address an important issue. "Improvement" means that you have identified the issue with a sentence/paragraph, not because you think your solution "sounds" better or because you heard about a rule somewhere and you're applying it without understanding it. Take, for example, the sentence "The children ran into the house and closed the door loudly." An inexperienced editor might think, "Aha! One should reduce the use of adverbs" and therefore edit the sentence to say "The children ran into the house and closed the door." But in that case, the editor has changed the meaning of the sentence without improving the sentence. The children didn't just close the door, they closed it in a certain way: loudly. A more experienced editor might think, "A stronger verb would communicate the information more vividly" and edit the sentence to say "The children ran into the house and slammed the door." That's an improvement. "Important" means your solution corrects an error, makes a detectable difference in readability, or reduces the potential for confusion. For example, if you can't tell which character is speaking in a passage of dialogue, it's important to address that issue. That you think "scarlet" is a better word than "crimson" for that particular shade of red is not important. That you know the phrase is "toeing the line" and not "towing the line" is important. One is incorrect and the other is not. When your edits include revising sentences, always ask: "Is this edit important AND does it improve the sentence?" ****** ✨I'm Jennifer Lawler, from Club Ed Freelancers 🌴🌴🌴 🤔I help editors figure out what the hell they're doing 💡I've made all the mistakes so you don't have to 📚Connect with me for editing tips and talk You can ring the 🔔 above to be notified of new posts #bookediting #freelancing #novelediting

An often-overlooked use of a closed AI platform is revising and rewriting. Frequently, we're asked to draft long-form motions, memos, and correspondence. In firms, the first drafts are typically completed by more junior lawyers and then revised by supervising lawyers. To improve work product and reduce time revising and further revising, I recommend you use a closed AI platform (we use CoPilot at our firm) to upload the document and provide it a detailed prompt to clean up the written work product. An example of such a prompt can read as follows: Take the enclosed document and make the following revisions: (1) make every sentence in the active voice; (2) use strong nouns and verbs (2) reduce the adjectives and adverbs (3); make each sentence 15 words or fewer, preferably 10 words or fewer; (4) have each paragraph start with a topic sentence (5) include titles and subtitles in bold throughout to make it easier to follow (6) ensure each paragraph follows from the last and leads into the next (7) ensure each sentence follows from the last and leads into the next (8) use plain english (9) write clearly and precisely (10) avoid legalese (11) ensure the same terms and abbreviations are used throughout; (12) ensure the order and style are clear, concise and make sense (13) note if anything appears to be missing and identify what so we can rectify it (14) ensure the spacing, margins, and other stylistic items are correctly done. This type of prompt will ensure that your work product is clear, concise, and practical, and this process saves time when revising.

AI EDITING TIP Here’s how you can turn AI into your own personal writing and editing teacher (not that I want to put myself out of business!). One of my favourite ways to work with AI tools is to ask them to list what needs editing and WHY they made certain edits (not just spit out an edited version of my text). This approach adds real value. So, instead of just tidying up your writing, you're learning along the way. If there's no compelling reason for an edit, maybe the edit doesn’t need to be made! Keeping your voice authentic is key. It's important you know what is being changed and why. Instead of simply asking ChatGPT or Gemini to edit, enhance or improve your writing, ask it to explain the reasoning behind its suggestions. Here's a sample prompt you can use: "Edit the following passage for clarity and readability. Then, summarise the changes and explain why each one was necessary so I can understand and improve my own editing skills." If you don't want an edited version, you can also try this prompt: "Review the text and list what you would edit with an explanation for each change so I can learn along the way." Using AI like this turns it into a learning partner that helps you build your editing skills. Give it a try and let me know how you go!

I used to deliver a lot of drafts to my editor with an apology for going over word count. I don't do that often, if at all, anymore. Here's what changed. I'm still learning to use 5 words instead of 15. My rough drafts usually have 2,200 words instead of the 1,500-1,800 the brief requested. So I get to work cutting 400+ words. But it's a much faster and more enjoyable process than it used to be. These three things have made all the difference: 1️⃣ I've learned to appreciate the whole "Kill your darlings" thing. It's still hard to part with words I'm proud of! Make no mistake. But I now enjoy finding sentences and paragraphs that: - Don't add anything - Are captured elsewhere - Need to be consolidated Now, I say "HECK yes" when I get to highlight and delete unnecessary sections, instead of mourning them. It's satisfying! 2️⃣ I've gotten better at interrogating myself. When I think a sentence or phrase needs to go but can't seem to cut it, I ask myself why. Usually, the answer falls into 1 of 2 categories. 🅰️ Fun, clever turns of phrase: alliteration, metaphor, or pop culture references. In this case, I ask, "Will the reader appreciate this as much as I do? Does it add anything for them?" If not, get out the scissors. ✂️ Extra credit: I find another spot to use that same convention in the piece! Can I use alliteration elsewhere or add an elegant two-word metaphor to scratch that itch? 🅱️ Helpful SME content when the piece is already PACKED with value. In these cases, I *also* ask if the reader needs the content. If yes, I look for related places in the draft where I could overview the idea as briefly as possible. 3️⃣ I learned to identify "ping-ponging" in my writing. Thanks to the kind and patient feedback of my editors, I now notice when a paragraph alternates between ideas. Here's a (super rough, over-simplified) example: BEFORE: "Write your content as concisely for the reader as possible. Don't write endless sentences that lose your reader. Instead, find places to streamline your flow, cut words, and clarify your message." AFTER: "Don't lose your reader with endless sentences. Instead, write concisely: Find places to streamline, cut words, and clarify your message." See how I was able to cut by putting positive sentiment together? Read through your paragraphs for flow, and edit to keep similar sentiments together — start negative, then go positive or vice versa. Odds are, you can combine sentences and trim some clauses or even a sentence in the process. BONUS TIP: I figured out how to hack my emotional attachment to my writing. When I have an inkling something needs to go, I drop it into a comment. It's there if I decide it's necessary to add it back in. But I somehow feel less devastated resolving a comment than deleting something in line. 🤷♀️ ~fin~ PS: What are your hacks for concise writing? 👀 I wanna know!

If your supervisor is editing your writing, with Track Changes turned on, use those edits to help you improve your writing. Don’t just hit “Accept All Changes” and send the document out. Use Track Changes to see—and learn from—the changes made to your writing. Review each change. Try to figure out why it was made. Read any comments. If you see the same issues repeatedly, add them to your personal editing checklist. Then, when you work on your next writing project, use that checklist to identify areas that likely need editing. If Track Changes wasn’t turned on, you can still do this: Word’s Compare Documents tool will give you a Track Changes document that you can learn from.