How to Self-Edit: Tips and Techniques (Part 1)
Even when you are planning to hire a professional at some stage of the writing process, editing your own work is important. To help you self-edit, here are a few tips and techniques you can use:
1) Make a Personal Checklist
What: Make a list of the errors you often make and use it as a checklist while editing. Your checklist can contain anything from common misspellings to any bad writing habits you have developed (e.g., using overly long paragraphs or relying on clichés). For example, I can never remember where to put the possessive apostrophe for words ending in an ‘s’, making this one item on my personal checklist.
Why it works: Gives you the opportunity to correct specific issues that are likely to come up in your writing.
Useful for: Fixing minor spelling errors or ingrained writing habits.
Want to make a personal checklist? You can find more details on how you can go about making such a list in this post: Editing Your Writing: Making a Personal Checklist.
2) Let Some Time Pass
What: Leave your work aside for some time (1 hour, overnight, a couple of days…) and then look at it with fresh eyes.
Why it works: When you immediately reread something without taking a break in between, your brain will fill in the gaps. You won’t notice any letters skipped or will process a word you typed twice as one. Taking a break gives you the distance you need to clear your mind. Generally, the longer the piece of writing, the longer the break should be.
Useful for: Catching small errors like typos or repetitions, but also good for spotting bigger issues (clunky transitions, an argument that doesn’t flow, etc.).
Note: I even use this technique when editing clients’ work. Whatever deadline my client has, I make sure I have enough time at the end to do a final round of editing after a good night’s sleep.
3) Try a Different Way of Reading
What: Read from the printed page instead of your computer screen, read aloud, or use a ruler as a line-by-line reading guide.
Why it works: Reading silently from a screen, your pace will be faster and your brain will fill in anything missing. All the different ways of reading suggested here force you to slow down, which helps you catch mistakes. You can even use your word processor’s text-to-speech (TTS) function. While the AI voice sounds rather mechanical and the reading pace is distinctly not human, this method will still allow you to detect some errors.
Useful for: Catching spelling mistakes, words that you skipped or typed twice, other types of typos, pacing, etc.
Note: If you are working on a lengthy manuscript, go through it in smaller chunks – reading aloud can be tiring after a while!
4) Focus on One Specific Item
What: Edit your writing by focusing on one specific item only. “One specific item” can be many different things, including section headings and subheadings; captions for diagrams, graphs, or images; footnotes / endnotes; citations and references; introduction and conclusion; any numbers used in the writing.
Why it works: Focused editing involves looking at a small amount of writing, meaning other textual distractions (i.e., errors lurking elsewhere) are removed.
Useful for: Catching inconsistencies between related items, fixing structural and organisational issues, catching typos, etc.
Note: Ideally, this is a technique you would use several times while self-editing – once for each item you want to focus on.
5) Use a Tool
What: Use a tool to help you catch errors. Options include your word processor’s spell check function, Grammarly, and specific macros (e.g., IstoIz/ IztoIS, WordPairAlyse, CountPhrase). You can also paste shorter texts into a Google Doc for a quick spell and grammar check or use the Writing Well Is Hard interface to check your text sample against another one of your choice, comparing the writing patterns in the two.
Why it works: Automatic detection of certain kinds of errors or writing patterns can aid your self-editing, but note that it still requires judgement on your part.
Useful for: Correcting spelling mistakes, catching minor typos (e.g., extra spaces), identifying some grammar issues or writing patterns.
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