Tips for Editing Your Own Writing

Editing your own writing can be a difficult process. Even as an editor, I would prefer to have another person look over anything that I have written, to help me find the inadvertent errors that seem to crop up while I am not looking. While it is always nice to be able to have a fresh pair of eyes review your writing, this luxury is not always possible. Whether due to time constraints or a lack of outside assistance, editing your own writing sometimes becomes necessary. However, there are some tricks you can use to make yourself more likely to find your errors when editing your own writing.

1) Give it some time

When you have just finished writing something, your mind is always still swimming with the details, making you less likely to see any errors that you may have made. You will be much more likely to catch these errors in your writing if you are able to take some time between when you finish writing and when you begin editing your own writing. Even if you can only take a 15 minute break for a snack, a cup of coffee, or a quick game of Solitaire, spending some time away from your writing will help you to approach it in a new way when you go back to edit your own writing.

2) Read aloud

Regardless of the tone of the piece you have written, reading it aloud can help you to find more errors than reading silently will, allowing you to better edit your own writing. Reading aloud also will help you to identify places that are repetitive or poorly worded. Even if you can't read the entirety of your work aloud, you can use this technique on any crucial, tricky, or unusual parts of your writing. If reading aloud might disturb nearby co-workers or family members, try reading quietly (aloud, but only loud enough for you to hear), or printing out a hard copy of your writing and taking it into the bathroom or another private room. The vocalization of your written words will help considerably in editing your own writing.

3) Keep a dictionary nearby

Spellcheckers are wonderful tools for helping you to edit your own writing, but they won't catch everything that is technically a misspelling. For example, "to," "too," and "two" are all words that a spellchecker will recognize as valid words. But many writers inadvertently type one when they mean another, and minor errors creep into their writing. For short words like these examples, a dictionary may not be as helpful to edit your own writing, but for words like "affect" and "effect," it can be invaluable for ensuring that you have used the correct word for the context.