T - Tautologies - Writing vs Editing (#AtoZChallenge)

Back at secondary school (1960s), I was never very good at English composition. I hated it partly because it all had to be written long hand so revision or rewriting was almost never done. It wasn't til I got into the business world that I had to come to grips with writing professionally. Even though I was a computer techie, I had to write proposals, specifications, management reports, user guides and training manuals, then later, web-site content. Fortunately, word processors were just becoming available. As my experience and professional standing grew, I moved into quality assurance and in particular, reviewing and editing the written work of others.

In the editing process especially, I learned a lot of basic writing techniques and taboos that were never mentioned at school. Thus the title mention of 'tautology', the use of superfluous additional words that mean similar things (did you notice my deliberate tautology in that sentence?). In poetry and song, repetition (of the same word) can be a useful tool in the rhythm of a piece. But in prose, and especially in technical writing, succinctness is key - never use two words when one will be enough suffice.

In my own writing, I found it better to keep the creative and editing processes separate, like switching hats. I realized that my writing issues had been in trying to get it right on the first pass. This is one of the key causes of "writer's block". Sometimes it's better to let the words pour out in free association, perhaps twice as much as is needed. Some people with a more visual style of thinking, prefer to use mind-maps or a story board to collect and organize their thoughts (see also sections and outlining below) before putting it into a document. Then read it over several times, so you know you have reached the culmination of your thoughts somewhere in there. 

Then look at getting some structure into your work. As a preacher friend told me the key to a good sermon, "First you tell them what your going to tell them, then tell them, then tell them what you've told them!" - its the old "introduction, body and summary" structure. Then think about who your audience will be - should "Introduction" become "Management Overview"? You will find you might want to move sentences or paragraphs around to collect related thoughts into the same sections. This is when you might find you have similar thoughts from different places that might best be merged and condensed, or superfluous fragments that add nothing to the core theme, that should be deleted. This is where I discovered the power of 'out-lining', either within MS-Word or a dedicated 'Outliner' tool. Organizing your work into paragraphs, sections and chapters helps clarify your thinking. Section headings become mini summaries of their content. Use the outline view to hide the content to just view the overall structure of your document with just the section headings.

Now you come to the nitty gritty of editing, of consistent tense and voice, alternate word choice (Flaubert's 'le mot juste'), sentence constructs, phraseology, grammar, punctuation and of course spelling.

Then put your work aside for a day or two and come back to review it with fresh eyes. Try reading it our loud to see if it 'flows' through the subject. Some people suggest reading it backwards, sentence by sentence.  This is not the proof-reading stage - you should be reviewing the semantic content - is there anything missing from the theme and goal, and is there anything that just doesn't fit or belong. When writing on a word-processor or on-line blogging editor, I sometime like to print my work off - seeing it in print with different font, page width, pagination etc, helps you see your work in a different light.

Depending on the size of your piece and its purpose, it is very useful to get someone else to proof-read it. I used to use my mother-in-law who had no knowledge of the subject matter but had an eagle eye for grammar and spelling.

I'm not going to recommend any specific book or web-site on editing, but a basic Google search on "editing and writing techniques" will provide an extensive list of sources of tips and strategies.

If you are a gardener, think of it like early pruning to give the core branches of a shrub a good structure, then once the foliage has become a bit overgrown, then pruning and shaping creates the specimen plant.

Select the types of techniques to use according to the type and size of your document. A User Manual or novel for limited or general publication should involve all these stages. A BLOG post might not have section headings, but organization into semantically related paragraphs is still important. Often a shorter piece like a '100 word' structure, or a poem (from 'free', to rhyming, to strongly structured like haiku or tanka), requires even stronger editing, where editing moves from being a technical stage to an art in its own right.

A mention should be included of attribution, though not quite editing, it is part of the completeness of a piece. All creation builds on the shoulders of those who have gone before, and proper attribution of significant or obscure external sources is polite and at times a copyright requirement. In printed work, foot-notes and bibliographies are the norm. In online work, like BLOG posts, hyperlinks to on-line resources or pop-up 'hover over' explanations (HTML "abbr" construct) serve the purpose. A hyper-link or pop-up can also be used to provide addition background information or explanation, best not put into the body of your writing.

Finally, accept that your work will never be perfect. You can never please all of the people all of the time. Receive criticism openly, evaluate alternate opinions dispassionately. In on-line work, be prepared to make corrections, amendments or addenda.

 
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