Editing Your Writing: Making a Personal Checklist

In my blog post on How to Self-Edit, I provided several tips and techniques for revising your own work. This time, I will go into more detail about one of the tips: the personal checklist.

When editing your writing, having a personal checklist will allow you to revise in a more systematic and efficient way. In the long run, it will also help you improve your writing. The checklist can include anything from common typos and minor mistakes you find yourself making to more complex, specific issues that you struggle with and want to work on.

To come up with items for your list, try the following:

1) Brainstorm

Write down any issues related to your writing that immediately come to your mind. If you can’t think of anything, that’s ok – you can move on to the next suggestion.

2) Check common errors lists

The second step is to consult a list of common errors. There are plenty available online, like here, here, and here. Some of these lists compile spelling mistakes that many people make, others identify common grammatical or stylistic errors. Do you see anything that you feel applies to your writing? We all have different hang-ups, so many items on these lists may not be a problem for you. The idea isn’t to make your checklist overly long, but to help you identify and deal with mistakes or issues that you might overlook otherwise.

3) Check your current writing

To really customise your checklist, it’s also important to take a look at examples of your writing. If you are already working on something – an article, a book chapter, a grant proposal – look through it for any errors you could add to your checklist. Are there any words you misspell repeatedly? Are you using too many transition words or too few? How about your sentence structure, is it sufficiently varied? Again, if you are struggling to identify problems, move on to the next suggestion.

4) Analyse corrections and feedback in past writing samples

Find several manuscripts that you submitted for marking (if you are a student) or editing (if you are an academic) and look at the corrections and comments you received. Are there corrections that pop up several times (whether within one document or across several manuscripts)? Do you notice any commonalities in the feedback? These edits and notes may point to something that should be added to your checklist. Analysing several manuscripts is crucial for this step; however, if you are looking at a writing sample from several years ago, keep in mind that you may have eliminated some of your earlier weaknesses.

5) Ask a professional

Finally, hire an editor to help you identify bad writing habits and common errors for your personal checklist. A professional will be able to point out issues you are not even aware of and can also provide you with specific strategies to resolve them, ultimately helping you improve the quality of your writing. For example, I have helped clients realise that they overuse certain words or favour particular sentence structures so much that it can impede the flow of their writing.

If you are interested in not just having a specific text edited, but would like to work on your writing more holistically, let’s talk!

What to keep in mind with your list

When making your list, you can analyse shorter documents (like emails), but it’s probably best to look at least several longer pieces of writing (like articles or your PhD thesis).
You can look at working drafts, but going through published work can also give you important insights about your writing.
Your personal checklist is a not a static, one-time document. Keep revisiting it as you progress in your writing journey. You may find yourself adding or removing items from the list.
Some issues you identify will be minor (like a simple spelling mistake) that you will be able to eliminate after a relatively short time. Others may be minor, but you may still want to keep them on the list for a sense of security. For example, although I know the rules for placing apostrophes with possessives for words ending in ‘s’, it’s still something I always like to double-check when editing my or other people’s writing.
Of course, there will also be bigger issues on the list – likely related to writing style – that will require conscious effort and time to resolve. This is not a flaw. Even the best writers are constantly refining their skills. Think of your list as a measure of quality control that will help you excel.