On Revising and Editing

A friend who had been working on an article sent me an e-mail recently in which he said, "It is truly amazing how I can keep finding things that can be said a little more smoothly by shifting a word or phrase." My friend is a good writer, though not a professional, and quite likely what has made him good at it is his willingness to look for "things that can be said a little more smoothly."

Of course, he has some basic skills that enable him to write reasonably good first drafts. Although I've never watched him write, I assume that even his first drafts don't utterly mangle sentences or contain egregious grammatical errors. His comment shows, however, that he has learned an important truth: Writing that is merely correct is not necessarily good or effective.

Correctness
Novices, of course, think of revision mostly in terms of correcting errors. That is indeed important. Correctness is a minimum requirement, and errors obviously have a negative effect. They can obscure meaning. They can, especially if they are blatant, cast doubt upon the writer's intelligence or the degree of care that the writer takes. At the very least, they are distractions.

Nevertheless, we should not settle for mere correctness, and this is unfortunately as far as some writers want to go. Sometimes students argue that an essay should have received an "A" because the instructor found hardly any grammatical errors. Well, no – an "A" designates excellence, and even a totally error-free essay may not be excellent. If it is verbose, vague, disorganized, or awkwardly phrased, it may not even be a "B" (assuming that grade inflation hasn't set in and "B" still stands for "good").

Understandability
Some individuals who may accept the theory that correctness is not enough may nevertheless insist that writing is good as long as it is understandable. (Some also suggest that, if it's understandable, it doesn't matter whether the writing is technically correct, but I won't get into that here.) Essentially, they are saying: "If the reader understands what I mean, that is enough. It doesn't matter how I say it."

Granted, understandability is a notch above mere correctness. A sentence may be technically correct and still not make sense, so any revision that increases understandability is certainly progress. Yet there are degrees of understandability. We may have a vague idea of what the author is trying to say, we may have a fairly good idea of what the author is trying to say but feel a certain dis-ease about how it was said, or we may have a crystal clear idea of the meaning. In other words, we have moved from the absolute realm of right and wrong (correctness) into the relative realm of clarity of meaning (understandability).

At this level, revision becomes more challenging. We must put ourselves in the reader's position. We know what we want to say – and perhaps we are convinced that we have said it. However, is there a possibility that the reader will miss or misunderstand the message, that it is plain to us only because we knew what we wanted to say in the first place? Revision for understandability requires what I call "editorial detachment" – viewing our words from the perspective of someone who doesn't know what we intend to say. Development of this ability requires practice (and a willingness to be self-critical). Providing this insight, of course, is one of the functions of a good editor, but most of us don't have an editor on retainer. Still, we can all submit what we've written to someone and ask: "Is everything here clear to you? Is there anything you find confusing?" Even if this person cannot suggest a revision, we have a clue that something needs work. Better yet, we can develop the editorial attachment that permits us to shift perspective on our own.

Style
Once we're reasonably certain that everything is correct and understandable, we need to take one more step. Why? Something may be correct and understandable but may be uninteresting or wordy; it may lack precision or vigor. In short, though good in every other respect, it lacks that elusive quality called style.

Style has been defined in many ways, but my favorite definition is "the best words in the best order." I would add to this definition ". . .and no unnecessary words." When my friend said that he was amazed at how much he could improve what he wrote "by shifting a word or phrase," he was talking about style. (He might have added "or by changing a word or phrase.")

Fine-tuning style can be an endless process. Therefore, if we hope to publish in this life and not the afterlife, we must say, at some point, "Enough is enough." If we're inclined toward perfectionism, we may need as much self-discipline to recognize when to stop tinkering as we did to start the process in the first place. Almost any piece of writing, however outstanding, can stand some more revision, but there is also the danger of overwriting or over-revising.

The Cumulative Effect
The chief benefit of reviewing what we write for correctness, understandability, and style is that we become better at it. What we originally did by painstaking revision begins to infuse our first drafts automatically. Just as, when we became conscious of correct grammar and punctuation, we started to observe the rules without consciously thinking about them, we begin to write more understandable and stylistic prose with less conscious effort.

Revision, or the art of self-editing, is thus a means of self-teaching. With practice at correcting our errors and detecting our weaknesses, we become more skilled at avoiding them. I believe that I have learned more from editing other people's writing than I have from any textbook because finding flaws in their work has made me better at recognizing flaws in my own.

It's natural to want to skip or scrimp on the process. Revision is less interesting than creation, and it takes time. The payoff is worth it, however. As we reap the cumulative benefits of revision, we not only write better; we also write faster, without sacrificing quality.