By Caroline M. Cole

Wanting to improve their writing, many people look online for guidance and find countless resources offering information such as the “4 Habits of the Most Successful Writers,” “Best Ways to Reach an Audience,” “Seven Steps to Better Writing,” “Quick Tips to Improve Your Communication,” “How to Tame the Unwieldy Message,” “Key Writing Mistakes to Avoid,” “Simple Things You Can Do to Enhance Your Document,” “Clearer Correspondence in 5 Minutes,” and so on. Promising titles and yet each resource seems to offer the same handful of suggestions regurgitated and repackaged ad infinitum: resist jargon and buzzwords; be specific; use powerful words; vary the length of sentences; avoid passive voice; incorporate bullets; prefer short paragraphs; show, don’t tell; fix cumbersome phrases; make information parallel; avoid clichés; be concise; and use grammar and punctuation correctly. Then, of course, there’s the suggestion that we simply read more or write more—or both.

These and comparable suggestions can lead to more effective writing, providing the writer understands what to do, how to do it, when to do it, and why to do it—that is, the rationale behind the advice other than, “…because a professional writer, teacher, or online resource said I should.” Unfortunately, most of these guidelines assume both that people recognize why each suggestion contributes to some apparent standard of “good writing” and that they are skilled in the discrete writing practices underlining each suggestion; they simply need to be reminded to do these things, prompting endless lists of things to do or avoid while writing. Little wonder that, despite following such advice, people continue to struggle to present their ideas effectively.

To be fair, a single lesson, post, or discussion on communication strategies will not make us masterful writers or speakers. At most, these resources can sensitize us to the existence of and rationale behind various communication practices. Depending on the context and audience, they might even offer “how-to” information, thereby helping us understand the tactics of a given strategy. Ultimately, however, skill in communication—like skill in any endeavor—requires sustained practice whereby we continually learn about, apply, test, assess, and modify individual techniques (ideally in various contexts) to understand how, why, and to what extent some approaches and practices work, while others do not. It is in the acquisition and honing of these individual techniques that we develop a repertoire of strategies we can use in countless combinations, in much the same way that a handful of notes can generate innumerable musical compositions. But if time and practice are key to writing development, what could another post on how to improve writing add to the conversation?

This discussion aims to provide a helicopter view of the context most writing advice assumes. Specifically, by pulling up a bit to get a fuller sense of the landscape than lists of discrete steps, tips, tricks, and so on can offer, writers of all levels can better identify and understand where they might focus their energy to improve their documents.

To begin, we must clarify the differences between revising, editing, and proofreading, for using these terms interchangeably confuses what elements of a document may need attention.

10,000 Feet: REVISION
Some people think that revision is simply a matter of running the spell checker and grammar checker to make sure they haven’t broken any writing “rules” in presenting ideas that seem clear to them. In fact, “revision” is from the Latin verb revidere, with the root videre, meaning “to see,” suggesting that when we re-vise, we “look at again” or “re-see” information to locate areas for improvement.

As Nancy Sommers, former director of the Expository Writing Program at Harvard University, explains in her oft-cited article on revision strategies, revision is the process of writers “finding the form or shape” of an argument, anticipating a reader’s judgment, recognizing “incongruities between intention and execution,” and continually moving between the whole of the document and its parts to identify which “details are added, dropped, substituted, or reordered…to make their writing consonant with [their] vision.”

In brief, it is the work that addresses the higher-order elements of a text: making sure that the information we present is complete, accurate, organized, and effectively framed so we can achieve the goals we have from the audiences to whom we are making our appeal in the contexts in which we are working.

Mini-Test for Revision…
The success of a document is, ultimately, whether we achieve the goals we have; therefore, revision should be guided by whether readers leave the document knowing what we need or want them to know.

To that end, we might give our document to someone with a different directive than the one most people typically offer. That is, instead of relinquishing our materials to someone else’s proverbial red pen by asking people what they think we should do to make our writing better, we should focus on learning what, exactly, our documents is saying to others. We can do so by approaching someone with a piece of our writing and the following request:

“I’m working on a document, but have a few questions about it. I’m looking for people who’d be willing to read it quickly, but carefully, and then answer a few questions so I can decide what to do next. I’m not asking for people fix or otherwise edit the materials—just those who can read it and answer 2–3 questions. Would you have a few minutes to help?

Although the phrasing you use may differ, you should stress that you’re not wanting someone to make comments on the document itself; you’re simply looking for a thoughtful reader.

Once you find someone who agrees and once that person finishes reading your document, take the document back (to minimize the reader’s temptation to use it as reference) and ask, “What do you see as the point of this document?” Then, simply listen. No harrumphing and arguing, no leading the witness, no challenging or criticizing the reader’s interpretation… . Just listen without judgment and, perhaps, write down the reader’s comments and observations.

If you’re able to remain neutral for more information, ask the reader: “What details or segments of the document led you to that understanding?” Then, again, just listen and record.

The final question, if you can stay impartial, might be, “What do you remember most from the document?”

The goal of this exercise is to understand what someone is taking away from the document as it is presently written—not to debate whether the reader’s understanding is accurate or to call attention to what you were trying to do. By understanding what our readers see in, focus on, and take away from our materials, we can identify elements that help (or hinder) readers from getting the messages we intend, narrowing the field of where we might focus our attention.

After revising the document, we might repeat this exercise (ideally with different people) until readers leave the document knowing or doing what we intend.

5,000 Feet: EDITING
Editing or copyediting is the process of refining the presentation of information, all the while making sure the information remains an accurate reflection of the writer’s ideas and positions. Granted, we may find ourselves inadvertently editing portions of our document as we are writing and revising, because such work can help us clarify our own understanding of the materials. Yet by the time a document is ready for editorial work, its purpose should be evident; its content should be complete; and its information should appear in a logical, reader-friendly manner. Editing simply ensures that readers can quickly and accurately follow the discussion from start to finish.

Mini-Tests for Editing…
To gauge the clarity of our documents, we need to understand what others experience while reading our materials. Whereas the “Mini-Test for Revision” aims to identify dissonance in a reader’s interpretation of what we are saying, the “Mini-Tests for Editing” calls out places a reader may struggle with how we are saying it. Below are ways to identify areas we may need to edit.

Read the Document Aloud. Many writers are advised to read portions of their documents, or the entire piece, out loud, listening for cumbersome sentences, awkward phrasing, grammatical problems, and so on.

While reading aloud can help us hear some of the problems in a document, this advice is limited for two reasons. First, it assumes everyone has the same views of how good writing sounds when, in fact, whether a document “sounds fine” depends upon the benchmark(s) we’re using to evaluate a document’s rhythm—patterns that are shaped by sentence structure, diction, punctuation, and so on. As such, using the conversation patterns of our immediate social circles may not give us “an ear” for the language patterns used in or expected by other forums. Therefore, simply listening for whether something sounds right may not help us identify areas that create problems for our readers.

Another, related concern is that this suggestion works best when writers have not seen or read the document for a few hours or, ideally, a few days—a timeframe that might not be feasible for every document we write. Unfortunately, without such distance, writers tend to read not what is on the page but, rather, what should be on the page, filling in the gaps with information they’re still working out in their minds.

Reading our own materials out loud may not help us identify everything that needs attention in our writing, but there are ways we can supplement this read-aloud strategy.

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Proxy Read-Aloud, Part I. To offset the biases we might bring to reading our own documents, we can give someone else our document to read out loud as we silently follow along, marking on a second copy of the document places the reader stumbles over words or phrases; repeats or re-reads passages; struggles with unpunctuated, or incorrectly punctuated sentences; or tempts us to jump up, grab the text from the reader’s hands, and yell, “You’re not reading it right!”

Throughout, we must keep in mind that the person is reading the document the way it is written so, rather than challenge or otherwise criticize proxy readers, we should thank them for their time and use their performance to identify places to edit our document to help others follow our ideas with greater efficiency.

• • •

Proxy Read-Aloud, Part II. Recognizing that we may not always be able to find someone who has time or interest to read our documents out loud, another way we can get comparable feedback for how to document sounds is by configuring our computer’s accessibility features to read a document as we follow along, marking areas to edit on a hard copy. Certainly this method may result in a more robotic presentation than a human reader could offer; nevertheless, a computer will read exactly—and only—what appears on the page, helping us locate areas with missing or misused words, inaccurately used punctuation, sentence fragments, and so on that we can edit before giving our document to others.

1,000 Feet: PROOFREADING
Proofreading is the surface-level polishing stage of writing, verifying the accuracy of our document’s grammar, punctuation, and spelling. Running a spell checker and a grammar checker may be the first step, but we should recognize that these tools cannot catch everything that may need attention. For example, a spell checker will not be able to identify missing, additional, or misused used words; it may also increase the number of errors by, say, changing the accurate spelling of unfamiliar words—a common response to proper names and other unconventional words. Therefore, while word processing tools can offer another filter for our writing, we should still review documents personally to make sure they convey the information we aim to offer our readers.

Mini-Test for Proofreading…
As explained with the read-aloud suggestion, writers tend to read what should appear on the page, regardless of whether it’s actually written on the page. One reason for this tendency is that we often become so accustomed to the idea we’re trying to present and the order of that information on the page that our brains begin to clump or gloss over individual passages, sentences, and words; in doing so, it becomes harder to notice the discrete, minute details that could, in fact, cause problems for our readers. Having someone else or even a computer read the document out loud can mitigate this concern but, if we are simply wanting to verify that sentences are coherent or grammatically accurate, we can trick our mind into seeing familiar sentences anew by reading sentences in reverse order; that is, start with the last sentence, then the second to last sentence, then the third to last sentence, and so on.

To make this process easier, we might insert 1–2 hard returns between each sentence, physically separating ideas in a way that allows us to address information in discrete units; this strategy would also help us see how long our sentences are, which could help us combine and condense the information in a strings of one-line sentences or, conversely, break up the content of several consecutive, multi-lined sentences. Or, we might use two sheets of paper—one to cover the sentences above the one we’re working on, and one to cover the sentences below—to isolate the area needing our attention. Whatever method we use, reading sentences in inverse order makes us less concerned with the flow of information, allowing us to concentrate on whether individual sentences are complete, coherent, or grammatically correct.

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In light of these definitions we can see why most “tip lists” create problems for writers: Pulling strategies from each level and presenting them in a single list of things to know or do, they inaccurately suggest that each effort is of equal value. They are not. Diction, for example, is important in communication but, ultimately, the words we use won’t matter if we are missing information our audiences need to understand what we’re trying to say. Similarly, if the accuracy, structure, or framing of information does not serve our document’s purpose, no amount of active voice constructions, cohesive devices, or rhetorical grammar will make our writing “work.”

We must become agile in moving between and among these various levels that affect writing, addressing the dissonance that emerges in trying to convey information to others who have their own views, values, biases, interpretations, goals and so on of the materials at hand.

By adopting a helicopter view of writing, we can be more strategic in identifying the areas we must address, and develop a better framework for understanding the writing advice we encounter. Together, this information will help us improve individual documents and our overall mastery of communication.

Working toward Areté…
For a .pdf summarizing the difference between and among revising, editing, and proofreading, click here. Then share your own observations about ways to improve writing in the space below.