Editing Well: 10 Tips

Slay those syntax somersaults

(Sketch from Army July 1973)

The most helpful piece of advice I ever received was to remember that all writing is personal. Starting with that, I offer ten suggestions below to anyone editing for the first (or one-hundred-and-first) time, based on my 12 years of experience editing at the Association of the United States Army, where I’m the Senior Editorial Manager for Education & Programs.

Mind the Ego

Every author (with some admirable exceptions) is naturally attached to their writing and inclined to be defensive about it. In consideration of this, edits and questions need to be framed as suggestions wherever possible. This gives authors the deference of remaining “in charge” of their own work.

This means it’s best to avoid first and second person pronouns like the plague. So, rather than saying, “You have an incomplete sentence here,” or, “You’re missing the capitalization on _____,” or, “I think you need to change the word to get your meaning across,” say instead, respectively, “Looks like the sentence is incomplete?” and, “____ should be capitalized,” and, “Meaning is unclear. Does this other word work better for the meaning of this sentence?” Egos are a big deal in the military (let me tell you something you don’t know!), and kid gloves are essential when issuing corrections to people who are used to being in charge. Take yourself and the author’s self out of it, and just talk about the text.

Be the Invisible Hand

It is your job as an editor to help authors say what they want to say, in the best and clearest way possible. The best editor is invisible in the final product.

Edit with Evidence

If you’re going to change something, have a concrete reason for it, and be able to back it up calmly and with well-founded self-assurance. When in doubt, STET—that is, let it stand. Don’t change it.

Cultivate Clarity

Readers get distracted by stylistic inconsistencies and excessive verbosity. The author’s language should advance a thesis, not distract or detract. Depending on audience and context, complicated syntax (in philosophical or theological texts, for example) or florid language (literary journals) can be appropriate and support or advance a thesis, but, generally, they often obfuscate the author’s intention.

Also be mindful of stylistic inconsistencies. These may include sometimes using an acronym, sometimes spelling it out; sometimes capitalizing a term, sometimes lowercasing it; sometimes using the serial/Oxford comma, sometimes skipping it.

People inevitably pick up on little things like this and, consciously or subconsciously, can more easily disregard an author’s main thesis because the fine polishing is shoddy or non-existent. Any good argument needs grammar, logic and rhetoric; it’s the job of the editor to help the author make sure that they are all there.

Find and Replace

Regarding inconsistencies, when you come across a term or phrase that is sometimes handled one way, sometimes another way, figure out which way is correct and then search the document for it so you can ensure it’s handled the same in each instance. Keep a running list of how you are handling such things for each project so you don’t have to keep flipping/scrolling to see how you did it last time.

Be Thoughtfully Inconsistent

Also regarding inconsistencies: sometimes, very rarely, I allow things to be inconsistent in order to help the reader understand the meaning of something with as few roadblocks as possible. It may or may not surprise you to know that I happen to think that it matters that we stick to the rules and have standards: in language, grammar and elsewhere in life.

For example, our style guide in Education & Programs at AUSA says no serial/Oxford comma. Most of the time that’s fine, but sometimes you get a list of things that are each several words or a phrase long, and not putting in that final comma before that last “item” means that a reader will have to go back and puzzle it out. In those instances, I add the verboten Oxford comma to allow the reader the luxury of just continuing to read without having to trip up, pause, go back, and get distracted from the main point.

Sometimes the flow of a particular sentence is better if you don’t follow the rules, but such liberties must be undertaken with understated, unobtrusive skill and finesse, otherwise you run into the old trap of poor language detracting from the thesis.

Don’t Make the Syntax Do Somersaults

Forgive me if you know this already, but, regarding two “classic” rules of grammar, namely, not splitting infinitives and not ending sentences with prepositions: both are fake rules. Grammarians in the early 20th century (or thereabouts) who were Latinate in their linguistic philosophies decided that infinitives should be unified in English as they are in Latin. The thing is, infinitives in Latin are only one word, not two, so it’s not, to be perfectly blunt, an idea that actually translates well.

The terminal preposition rule came from a similar (perhaps the same? I don’t know) class of grammarians: “The traditional caveat of yesteryear against ending sentences or clauses with prepositions is an unnecessary and pedantic restriction. And it is wrong. As Winston Churchill is said to have put it sarcastically, ‘That is the type of arrant pedantry up with which I shall not put.’ The ‘rule’ prohibiting terminal prepositions was an ill-founded superstition based on a false analogy to Latin grammar. Today many grammarians use the dismissive term ‘pied-piping’ for this phenomenon” (Chicago Manual of Style, 17th ed., 5.180).

For both of these things, because they are “rules” that everyone seems to know and think are very important, I will generally adjust text to avoid them if it doesn’t throw things off too much or make things seem unnatural. Splitting an infinitive or ending a sentence with a preposition can be legitimately distracting to the readers who don’t know that such things are actually just fine. But I don’t make the syntax do somersaults to avoid them: that would break the cardinal rule of focusing on the language instead of clearly communicating its meaning. Like so many other things, it’s a judgement call!

Don’t Be Dumb

Watch out for “dumb quote marks.” This is the actual real name for quotation marks—and apostrophes—that show up in whatever font you’re using as straight lines instead of curved lines. You want “smart marks,” not dumb marks.  Some simplistic fonts, like the one used on Facebook statuses, if I recall correctly, don’t curve their quotation marks and apostrophes, so when things are copied and pasted and dropped into another document, it causes a problem. You can search and replace in a whole document to make sure you get them all if you seem them cropping up.

Watch Your Dashes

There are three kinds of dashes—hyphens, en dashes and em dashes—and they each have a specific purpose. Hyphens are the shortest, en dashes are twice as long and em dashes are three times as long. The latter two get their name from the fact that, in most fonts, an en dash is the same width as the letter n and an em dash is the same width as the letter m. The hyphens are the easy ones we use for compound words and adjectives, like the Russo-Ukrainian War. En dashes are used in number ranges, both for years and pages. When I start editing a set of endnotes and see that an author has taken the time to cite a page range as 63–65 rather than 63-65, I cheer internally. World War II lasted from 1939–1945, not 1939-1945. Finally, em dashes are the most versatile and blessedly flexible of any punctuation mark. They can be used to set off an aside—such as I did in the first sentence of this paragraph and as I’m doing right now—and they can be used in the same way (but with looser restrictions) that a colon or semi-colon might be used to emphasize a point at the end of a sentence. For example: “Everyone should understand the rules of grammar—especially editors.”

Check the Big Print

It’s easy to get lost in the weeds of the text and assume that of course we haven’t messed up on any titles or subtitles, because they’re straightforward and obvious. How could we miss anything that stands out like that? Well, precisely because we don’t expect to miss anything, so we don’t even look at it. I remember in 2014, when Russia invaded Crimea, sending a topical paper off to the printer with a fatally misspelled Ukranian in the title. Luckily I realized the mistake just in time, literally told the printer to “stop the presses” and sent over a revised proof with that all important first i inserted where it belonged: Ukrainian. Learn from my mistake, and check the big print.

Anyway, I hope all of that is helpful! I’m sure there’s loads more I could say, but that should be enough to keep the wheels turning.