American writer and literary critic William Zinser once said,

"Rewriting is the essence of writing well–where the game is won or lost."

While writing, you can easily get lost in your message. So far, this book has taught you two of the five steps in the writing process.

Planning consists of analyzing your audience, defining your purpose, finding credible sources, and organizing information. Drafting includes writing the document. After drafting, you might be tempted to submit or send your document, believing it to be the final product. However, you have three important steps left, and two of them are covered in this chapter: Revising and editing.

As William Zinser said, the quality and success of your document or project are dependent on learning how to revise and edit. So, let's start. 

revise

During the revision process, write and rewrite entire sections of your document to improve the content. Focus on the document’s main idea, and notice whether or not the agenda leads the audience to the main idea. 

Organization

Ask yourself these questions: Does the document or presentation follow the SMART technique? Does it flow logically? Does it use direct structure? Use the following criteria to evaluate the document's organization: 

• Story/Hook: Does it contain a compelling, relevant theme/proverb/hook/story that grabs the audience's attention? 
• Main Idea (Thesis): If persuasive, does it contain the persuasive claim? If informative, does it contain the main idea/thesis? If a recommendation, does it contain the problem and solution statements? If instructive, does it contain the intended destination? 
•  Agenda (Preview): Does it preview the reasons? Is the agenda structurally and grammatically parallel? 
• Reasons (Supporting Points): Does the body follow the reasons in the order they were presented in the agenda?
• Transitions: Does it contain transitions between paragraphs and sections? 
• Task (Conclusion): Does it wrap up the story, restate the main points, and restate the main idea? Does it close on a forward-looking note?  

cONTENT

Ask yourself these questions: Is the content convincing? Do the reasons reflect solid reasoning? Are the reasons supported by credible evidence? Use the following criteria to evaluate the content:

• Complete: The document covers all agenda items and each agenda item is supported with evidence.
• Clear: The content is easy to understand. The language is tailored to the audience and demonstrates proper tone. Graphics are clear, uncluttered, and anchored. 
• Concise: The information is succinctly stated and avoids redundancies. For online documents, hyperlinks provide easy access to additional (but nonessential) details without cluttering up the document.
• Coherent: Each paragraph features a topic sentence and everything in the paragraph is guided by that sentence. Remember, busy readers skim documents by reading only the topic sentences. If someone skimmed your document, would they catch the main points of the argument? If not, rewrite.
• Convincing: The document contains well-developed paragraphs that support assertions with examples, data, and illustrations tailored to the audience’s inclinations and knowledge. Language is not abstract. Data visualizations provide audience-focused context. 
• Credible: All evidence is from trusted sources, which are correctly signaled and cited. Writing is free from logical fallacies. 

design

Imagine yourself standing about 10 feet away from a printout of your work or zooming out your screen view to about 30% of full size. What do you see? Layout, spacing, headings—and not much else.

From this distance, you can’t read the document. Instead, you get a sense of its overall design: colors, fonts, alignment, white space, graphical elements, contrast, and so on. Readers form their first impression based on the document’s design. More than ever, good design equals professional credibility.

Ask yourself these questions about the document's text formatting:

• Does the document look professional?
• Does it have a clear and compelling headline or title?
• Would color add interest or draw attention to key points?
• Are the fonts easy to read? If more than one font is used, do they work well together?
• Do the heading fonts follow a logical hierarchy?
• Is the document left justified?
• Does sufficient white space prevent the document from seeming crowded or claustrophobic?
• If this deliverable will be viewed online, is it readable on a mobile device?

take a break

According to Dr. Srini Pillay, Harvard psychiatrist, assistant professor, and brain-imaging researcher, intensive focus compromises your judgment and creativity.

Dr. Pillay’s insights are crucial to the writing process. When you finish a substantial first draft of an important document, get away from it. Get up from your computer, go outside, walk around, or take a power nap. Deliberately get your mind off the topic or issue you’ve been writing about.

During your break, your brain will continue to assemble and organize the information you’ve been working on, so set an alarm or timer for at least 15 minutes before you start writing again. When you return from your break, you’ll see your writing with                                                          fresh eyes.

engage in peer review

Even when you come back with fresh eyes, you will still be partial to your writing. Your brain will not pick up on inconsistencies and organization errors because it fills in the gaps. Therefore, ask a trusted peer or colleague to review your work for major content, organization, and design issues.

You may feel uneasy about getting feedback, even when you trust your peer, but if you regard feedback as an opportunity instead of a threat, you can exponentially improve your communication skills. Be open to someone else’s ideas, even if you believe you're in the right. 

You may wonder when you should ask someone else to review your work. If your project is long, complicated, or mission-critical, solicit feedback from trusted colleagues. Be reasonable in your time request to make the job easy for your editor or proofreader.

Make your request as easy as possible for your peer reviewer. Offer to grab them a drink while they review your document.

To overcome the natural anxiety about putting your work in front of critical eyes, focus on the project rather than yourself.

Remember that even in our digital age, some people prefer proofing printed copies. Above all, be grateful for and receptive to their feedback.

And when someone asks you for feedback, give it generously, seeing it as an opportunity not only to help the other person but also to help yourself. You will invariably improve your own communication skills as you help others improve theirs.

Edit

Whereas revising focuses on major changes, editing focuses on sentence-level changes. In the editing phase of the writing process, the writer looks for issues with sentence variety, word choice, and sentence order. The editing phase includes omitting jargon, buzzwords, idiomatic expressions, passive voice, absolute language, hyperbole, hedging language, wordy phrases, and other gobbledygooks that can confuse the audience.

In an ideal world, your audience would start with your first word and read carefully through your entire message. In the real world, however, audiences rarely do that. In fact, that’s not the way you typically read, is it? Therefore, peer review is just as important in editing as it is in revising. Why? We do not typically notice our own sentence-level errors.

Read this sentence:

It deosn’t mttaer in waht oredr the ltteers in a wrod aapper; the olny iprmoatnt tihng is taht the frist and lsat ltteer be in the rghit pclae.

Most likely, you easily understood the sentence even though the letters are jumbled. Your brain automatically corrected it as you read. Your brain also corrects mistakes in your own writing. When you communicate, your intent is to convey meaning. Your brain focuses on that meaning and therefore tends to skim over the actual words and sentences you compose. See the potential problem? Your brain already knows the meaning because you wrote it. You won’t notice your little (and sometimes big) blunders.

Avoid this problem by having someone else review your writing before you print, submit, or send it. Find a trusted colleague and develop a reciprocal relationship. You can especially benefit by having that friend read your work aloud to you. If you don’t have time for an actual peer review, read your own work aloud. We often hear problems that our brains skip over when we read silently.

Technology can help, too. Your word processor and third-party software like Grammarly are increasingly adept at catching spelling and grammar goofs. Heed this warning, however: the software misses commonly misused or mistyped words. If you mean manager but type manger, your spellchecker probably won’t come to your rescue. Instead, you first notice the design and layout of a piece, glance at the title, scan the headings and visuals, and maybe read a line or two. Only then do you decide whether to commit the time and effort to read the full message.

style

Style refers to word choice, sentence variety, wordplay, creativity, and tone. Everything you write has a style. As an analogy, think about what you decide to wear each day. Your wardrobe choices communicate something about you; they reflect your personal style or fashion sense (deliberate or not).

So it is with your writing. The way you use words, the rhythm of your sentences, even whether you use a semicolon or a dash—these subtle choices constitute your style.

More generally, style refers to the ability to write with grace, which elevates the message from useful to delightful, from informative to compelling.

The best way to develop good style is to read, read, read.

Get the voice of great stylists in your head so you can imitate their cadence, nuance, wit, and flair. The recommendations for further reading at the end of this chapter include Steven Pinker’s The Sense of Style. That’s a great place to start.

Not all audiences, however, will appreciate your nuance, wit, or flair. Professional messages often reach audiences from a variety of nationalities. Check for idiomatic expressions, colloquialisms, and inside jokes so the document will appeal to its primary and any potential secondary audiences.

Also, evaluate the document’s tone. Is it too stuffy for a quick check-in message on Slack? Too chatty for an update to the vice president? If something in the document sounds clunky or off-key, a tone problem needs to be fixed.

In Conclusion

Revising your work can take a few minutes or a few weeks, depending on the document’s length and the stakes involved. Even a short but critical email might take days to get right.

Thoroughly revising gives you a chance to review your work with fresh eyes and solicit feedback from trusted peers and colleagues.

Sentence-level editing starts with your and your peer reviewer's overall impression of the document's design. Continue editing for organization: the SMART technique. The next step checks the reasons: content, paragraph structure, and supporting details. Finally, edit for style, which includes your tone. The next step is to PROOFREAD your document, the topic covered in the next chapter. 

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