Page 34 - Perfect English Grammar: The Indispensable Guide to Excellent Writing and Speaking

This isn’t about how to edit. It’s about why to edit. In short, we edit because
we’re human and we make mistakes. Editing means we look at our text with

sharp eyes to find errors and to fix them.
The longer version is we edit because we make mistakes, and we make

mistakes because:

■ We’ve been staring at the same text for so long our eyes glide over

errors.
■ The ideas are clear in our heads, so our brains fill in the gaps where

pieces are missing. Other people will notice the gaps right away.
■ We frequently do not give ourselves enough time to do the work,

because we underestimate the size of the task or because we waste
time.

To edit your own work:

■ If you can finish with lots of time to spare, put the writing aside and
then go back to it later. Even just a couple of hours can give you a

new perspective on your own work. If you can go back to it days or

even weeks later, so much the better. It will be like reading someone
else’s work, and you’re likely to say, “What was I thinking?” more than
a few times.

■ If you don’t have time to spare, a widely used trick is to temporarily

change the typeface and the size of the text and margins. Make the
margins bigger and the text larger. This way, your eyes are less likely

to glide over familiar-looking blocks of text.
■ Don’t be kind to your own writing. The saying in the writing business

is, “kill your darlings.” That means that any spot where you think
you’ve been particularly brilliant is a spot where you should spend

time making sure it’s really as brilliant as you think it is. Chances are,
it can be trimmed, reworded, or even removed altogether.

If you are working on a book, master’s thesis, dissertation, or other large,