The Art of Editing

Editors are curious individuals—almost as quirky as authors. While there are certain principles of clear communication and grammatical accuracy to which most editors will adhere, each of us has our own idiosyncrasies and inclinations. When it works, the relationship between a writer and an editor can be enjoyable, enlightening and inspiring for both people. But how can you tell if it’s going to be like this?

One way I try to address this question is by providing my potential clients with a sample edit.

Here’s how it works. When you contact me, I get an initial sense of whether or not I am the right editor for you. If I think we may work well together, I will ask you to send me your manuscript, assuring you that I’ll keep it safe and confidential while it is in my care. I then edit part of the text, generally beginning at the beginning. I use track changes in Microsoft Word when editing. This allows you to see the changes I make, and it enables me to include comments, questions, observations and suggestions within the document.

The image below shows an example of an original draft, adapted from an article previously published on this website.

And this is what the text looks like when it is marked up using track changes.

As you can see, I have made a few corrections (shown in the text in green), along with some suggestions (in the blue comment boxes on the right-hand side).

Taking these corrections and suggestions into consideration, here’s how the revised version might read.

Of course, if you had written these paragraphs and had received this sample edit from me, you might have made different decisions about their final form. That’s the delightful thing about writing and editing: they are both expressions of unique creativity and are both so open to interpretation and invention.

By providing you with a sample edit, I give you the opportunity to see if your creativity and mine align. When they do, we each have the chance to engage in an artful and enjoyable experience of editing.

Have you ever received a sample edit from an editor? Did that influence your decision to work with that person? What insights or information do you want to have before you choose who will edit your writing?

Photo by Joanna Kosinska on Unsplash

Try as we might to avoid it, editing can sometimes be distressing. After putting their hearts into their craft, writers can feel slighted and even assaulted by the comments, questions, corrections, and suggestions that editors strew through their manuscripts. Although it is never an editor’s intention to cause anguish, the distress that writers might feel at having their words so closely scrutinised is real.

If you ever find yourself in this situation, here are some points to keep in mind.

1. Time

Artful writing requires time, but skilful editing does too. While some people relish a last-minute rush, many of us respond less well to such pressure. Distress can arise when you do not allow yourself enough time to consider and implement your editor’s suggestions. This is especially so if significant or structural changes are proposed.

You may, on the first reading, disagree—even vehemently—with what your editor has done and said. But if you let the ideas settle a little and return to them at a different time, in a different frame of mind, you might find they have some merit. Notice your reactions, but do not act on them immediately. Nor is it advisable to fire off an instant and upset message to your editor, whose focus is on achieving the best outcome for your manuscript.

Wait a bit. Take a breath. Have a think.

If you still feel overwhelmed or aggrieved after some time has passed, compose yourself and get in touch with your editor. A calm response is likely to produce a better result for you and your writing.

2. Communication

From the first contact between writer and editor, clear and honest communication is vital on both sides. In addition to describing your project and your passion for it, you need to tell your editor your concerns and aspirations regarding your manuscript. At the same time, your editor should articulate her approach and explain the suggestions and corrections she makes. This exchange must continue throughout the process to enable the writer and editor to understand one another. Each will then have a sense of how revisions are evolving and where adjustments need to be made. Sometimes changes to the text are necessary for reasons of clarity or grammar, but without explanation from the editor, such corrections can appear capricious.

If you feel your editor has misunderstood an aspect of your story or has indicated alterations that you feel compromise your writing, it is important to discuss this. After allowing yourself some time and inhaling those few deep breaths, share your concerns with your editor. None of us gets into this with intention of causing harm to anyone, and confusion or conflict can often be resolved through conversation.

3. Respect

As vital as time and communication are when dealing with distress that may arise from editing, the key to it all is respect. You need to respect your editor as someone who loves good writing and has specialised knowledge of language and how it works. This is not to say that editors always have the right answers, never make mistakes, and do not let personal preferences influence their work. We’re human too. But if you have asked an editor to help you with your writing, trust in her expertise and show respect for her ideas before you react against them.

At the same time, give yourself respect as a writer. You know your story, your style, your topic, and your purpose better than anyone else. Although you may not be able to spot the flaws in your own words, you know their truth, and it is this that enables you to see which of your editor’s suggestions will enhance your writing and which may hinder it.

Be willing to listen and remain open to possibilities that you might not have imagined. The gift of working with an editor is that you engage in a relationship with an expert who is both professional and partisan, objective and interested.

In the end, we’re always on your side.

Writing is a joyful, difficult, beautiful, challenging, invigorating endeavour, and so is editing. The process of having your writing edited can sometimes be confronting, but if writers and editors alike embrace the grace of time, communication, and respect, it need not be the cause of any distress.

Have you ever found editing to be distressing? What strategies did you use to manage that situation? What advice would you give to editors or writers to help make editing more meaningful and enjoyable?

I have such admiration for artists. Painters, illustrators, photographers, sculptors, musicians, designers, dancers, and more: they all reflect and refract the world through their work, providing us with insight, delight and occasionally a new perspective on life.

Yet, like writers, artists sometimes need editors too.

A large—and sometimes unwelcome—part of being an artist today is the necessity to promote oneself and one’s work. In addition to dedicating themselves to their practice, artists must also compose copy for their websites, engage with social media, apply for grants and residencies, craft clever statements about their inspirations and intentions, summarise their lives into pithy bios, and explain themselves and their work in essays, articles and interviews.

Most of these activities involve writing of some kind and all require a proficiency with language.

For some creative people, writing is simply another form of art, as enjoyable and innate as their primary practice. For others, however, it is far from their preferred medium, and the process of translating thoughts into words can be daunting.

Often in their writing, artists are trying to turn the cryptic into the concrete. It doesn’t always succeed.

Sometimes what is written about art—by artists and critics alike—is so convoluted and abstruse that it is almost incomprehensible. This may, on occasion, be a deliberate device to demonstrate the complexity of the concept or the erudition of the author, but it is of little use if the meaning is rendered unintelligible.

At other times, the difficulty lies in simply framing a clear statement. Ungainly phrases struggle to convey intangible ideas and elusive truths, and again the meaning is lost. This is especially problematic when artists seek to convince judging panels through written submissions that their art is worthy of recognition or funding. If the panel members can’t make sense of what they are reading, they are unlikely to view the application favourably, regardless of how much merit it might have.

The key for artists, and for all astute writers, is to use words that are considered, creative, precise and persuasive, which of course is easier said than done.

It takes effort to achieve such artful writing, and it’s not a skill every artist wishes to develop. Nor do they need to.

If you are an artist, then rather than worrying about where the full stops go or doubting your chance to get that grant because you are not confident with your written expression, a better approach is to find a sympathetic editor who can help you communicate your intention clearly and effectively. It won’t relieve you of the need to wrangle your tangled thinking into words, but it will mean that ones you produce are more purposeful and professional.

That way, you can go back to doing what you love, and we can enjoy your wonderful creations.

Do you struggle with writing as an artist? Have you ever asked a language expert for help? What do you wish you understood better, in order to improve your written expression?

I could make this an incredibly short article by just writing the word ‘No’, but of course there’s more to the story than that. In this case, there is also a story behind the story. It explains why this issue is currently on my mind.

Last month, I had the unpleasant experience of discovering some mistakes in a document I had edited and sent back to a client. By the time I found them, the material had already been sent to production, so it was too late for any remedy. I was embarrassed and apologetic but also disappointed in myself. I regard all my work seriously and strive to ensure it is as free of errors as possible.

And I guess that is the point: as free of errors as possible.

I could recite a list of reasons why this oversight occurred, but to my ears they sound like excuses and poor ones at that. Nor would recounting them change what has happened. A more useful approach is to offer some reminders—for myself as much as for you—that may help prevent such situations from arising.

Here, then, are a few suggestions for doing a final check of your document before handing it over to an audience, your boss, a publisher, or even your editor.

1. Give yourself time

This is the simplest advice, and I’m sure you’ve heard it before. But you know what? It works. You first need to allow a reasonable amount of time to complete a thorough edit of your manuscript. The more practice you have with this, the more accurate you will be in determining how long this will take. When you have a fair estimate of the time required, grant yourself a bit extra. This is especially advisable for important documents. Then, whenever possible, allow a full day or at least a night between the penultimate and final proofreads of your text. You really do see things differently and will pick up on minor errors when you have some distance from the words.

2. Read it aloud

Yes, I know you’ve been told this one too. I find this strategy is effective for some people and less so for others. The trick is not just to read out loud but to actually listen to what you are saying. You won’t notice flaws in syntax and flow if you’re just droning away without paying attention. Read slowly and pause between paragraphs. Let your mind absorb the words and the way they work together. Hearing your writing can help you improve it, but do remember that that this approach may not enable you to spot typos or other visual inaccuracies.

3. Change how it looks

We’ve all had the experience of spotting a slip up just after printing sixty copies of a document, right? (Please tell me it’s not just me!) There you stand, papers in hand, staring at the error and wondering how you could have missed it during the twenty-eight read-throughs you did before printing. Why did you not notice it before? The answer is that you are now seeing it differently. If your material is brief enough to print, try doing that for your final proofread. If it is a longer document, change the size or colour of the type or put the text into a different font. You might also try saving it as a PDF and reading it onscreen. Sometimes that’s all it takes for mistakes to make themselves known.

4. Use a spelling and grammar checker with extreme caution

This tip comes with a hefty warning. Please do not under any circumstances rely solely on the built-in spelling and grammar checkers in your word processing program. While they may be useful in pointing out the odd grammatical glitch, their proposed corrections can be—with alarming frequency—just plain wrong. My advice is that you review with a measure of skepticism each item identified by the checker and really consider whether or not its recommendations are relevant, appropriate and accurate. If you are unsure, seek further clarification, either online or from someone who has some expertise with language.

5. Embrace subjectivity

Editing, like writing, perspective and style, is subjective. Although there are numerous rules governing language, their interpretation can be quite individual—not to mention idiosyncratic. In practice, this means that what appears incorrect to me may be perfectly acceptable and even preferable to someone else. Perhaps in that sense, mistakes themselves can be considered as subjective, existing only in the eyes of those who behold them.

6. Be human and humble

These ideas are hopefully helpful, but in the end, my friends, it comes down to a simple truth. None of us is perfect and nor will our endeavours ever be, despite our best and most dedicated efforts. Mistakes in editing can be annoying, embarrassing and unfortunate, but they are very rarely fatal. When they do happen, acknowledge them, apologise for them, and amend them if you can. Above all, accept that you won’t always get it entirely right. It’s okay, though. You’re in good company.

For myself, I plan to practice all of the prompts I’ve shared here. Doing so won’t make me a perfect editor, but it will mean I am a human one, which is as good as I can be.

Have you ever made an editing error that you’re willing to share? Or has an editor ever missed a mistake in one of your manuscripts? What do you do to recover from such uncomfortable bungles?

Here’s a puzzle for you to ponder. In your view, which of the following is most true?

Editing essentially involves:
a) wrangling unruly words into smooth sentences
b) telling authors all the things they are doing wrong in their writing
c) stifling creative expression by imposing boring conformity on written texts
d) having a licence to act snooty about possessing a superior grasp of grammar
e) wincing a little whenever commas, semicolons or apostrophes are misused
f) establishing happy and harmonious relationships.

If you guessed options a or e, you are partly right. If you picked b, c or especially d, then we need to talk. If you were confused by option f, you’re probably not alone, but actually, that is the correct the answer.

Yes, despite all that fussing over spelling and sentence structure, editing is essentially about relationships.

The primary one of these, and the one I discuss a lot, exists between the author and the editor. There are many reasons why this relationship is important, not least of which is the fact that without authors there can be no editors. Of course the opposite is not true. Although editors need an author’s words in order to edit, authors can cheerfully (if at times inaccurately) write without editors. That’s what makes it a privilege, in my view, whenever an author elects to work with an editor.

In addition to the relationship between an editor and an author, there is also one between the editor and the author’s ideas. While connection and collaboration among individuals is a wonderful thing, an editor must also engage with the ideas in a document in order to ensure they are conveyed clearly and completely. This is where the first relationship can be crucial, as the editor seeks to discern the author’s intentions and helps to craft their written expression.

Beyond this, there is a relationship between the author’s ideas and the readers’ understanding. Having a conscious comprehension of this guides editors in their work. The purpose of most writing is to share insight, imagination or information, and the role of the editor is to amend the text where necessary so this can be done effectively.

And now we get into some more subtle relationships, because an editor addresses the processes that occur between sentences in a text and between words in a sentence. Here, we are touching upon the fundamentals of syntax, those accepted patterns of word order that enable us to express meaning. When coherence breaks down from one paragraph to another or words go awry within a sentence, the meaning of a text is lost. An editor’s job is to fix this by understanding and improving the relationships amid words and sentences.

This leads us to one further relationship, which is between words and ideas. The author’s task is to use the most potent and poetic words possible to articulate an idea. For an editor, the focus is on enhancing the eloquence of words and ideas alike. This is done through a deep appreciation not only of the author’s objective but also of language itself.

From the personal to the conceptual, and from the meaningful to the syntactical, editing is all about relationships. Each one is like a single strand of a intricate web that in its entirety and complexity links ideas, words and people together.

Achieving harmony in each and all of these relationships is what editors do. This is the true essence of editing, and it is what makes our skills so vital and so valuable.

What relationships do you perceive between writing and editing? What do you consider to be the essential elements of these? And you don’t really believe editors are snooty, do you?