By Dana P Skopal, PhD

Recently I’ve been asked about the steps used to edit one’s own work. This seems to be an ongoing issue for many writers. However, we draft and write our messages differently, which means we may need different sets of tools to revise and edit our own work. Some people may use a checklist to edit, while others may read their text out aloud or print it out for someone else to read.

If you use a checklist, remember that you are writing for your reader and any checklist needs to factor that in. If you have a business report, check whether your recommendations answer the issue that the organisation needs to address. If you have an assignment question, check whether you have actually answered the question(s).

Your message needs to convey relevant information, so checking the logical order of your content needs to become a part of your drafting/revising stages – before any final edit or proof-read. One possible process is to take your headings and first sentence of each paragraph and check that they make sense to an independent reader.

Next, do you have a method to check your text’s coherence? You still need to produce a coherent message, and editing alone may not provide an adequate checking method if it principally looks at grammatical points.

Good writing, whether it be a report or an essay, rarely happens without good planning and careful revisions. If you are writing a long document, perhaps make a list of elements that you want to check as you revise your final draft. After that final revision is complete, then consider the grammatical  and formatting aspects that you want to check and view these as your final editing stages. The last step should be proof-reading, and that can take significant time if it is a long text. When you can, plan to give yourself time for these important editing and proof-reading stages.

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