Why Does Your Text Need To Be Edited?
Taking The Mystery Out Of Editing #1
Awen Rowan-Nelson
Every kind of written work needs to be edited. Yet, all too often, even experienced writers will miss their own errors, despite editing a piece numerous times. Others will ask someone who is not a professional editor—like a family member, a friend, a colleague, or even another writer—to check over their work. However, these are mistakes that can have serious consequences.
For example, a poorly structured text will often confuse readers to the point that they will stop reading altogether. When this happens, the writer or the business they represent will lose a potentially lucrative contract, customer, or client. Yet, even when readers finish an unedited, poorly edited, or incompletely edited text, the writer or the business is still quite likely to lose a potentially lucrative contract, customer, or client. Why? Well, the answer is simple and can be boiled down to a lack of confidence in the credibility, qualifications, and trustworthiness of both the writer and the business.
Think of it this way: would you walk into a face-to-face meeting with a potential customer or client without having either bathed or washed your hair for over a week and wearing torn, dirty clothing? Of course not! Well, when your writing is introducing your business, brand, or latest innovation to that same customer or client, it is often the quality of the editing that makes the difference between an excellent first impression and a closed door.
Finally, but very importantly, writers often leave errors in their work even though they have read it, edited it, and read it again, often repeatedly throughout the writing process. In fact, familiarity with the text is often the main reason why writers will fail to notice the errors in their works. They know well what the text is supposed to say, and so that is what they see when they read, reread, and edit their text. In addition, familiarity is further complicated by the human brain’s ability to think that words are spelled correctly, even when they are spelled about as far from correctly as possible. Indeed, the human brain actually gives us the ability to read what we think should be on the page, or what we expect to find on the page, rather than what is actually on the page. A powerful example of this phenomenon is worth a thousand references to scientific studies, statistics, or academic articles, and so instead of directing you to several ponderous studies, I ask you to read the well-known paragraph below. When you do, you will experience for yourself exactly what I have been describing here:
THE PAOMNNEHAL PWOER OF THE HMUAN MNID.
Aoccdrnig to a rscheearch at Cmabrigde Uinervtisy, it deosn’t mttaer in waht oredr the ltteers in a wrod are, the olny iprmoatnt tihng is taht the frist and lsat ltteer be in the rghit pclae. The rset can be a taotl mses and you can sitll raed it wouthit a porbelm. Tihs is bcuseae the huamn mnid deos not raed ervey lteter by istlef, but the wrod as a wlohe
While it seems utterly amazing that we can read and comprehend the paragraph above quite easily, the simple explanation is that our brains are making us believe that the words are spelled correctly. Unfortunately, this is true not only when we read an extreme example like the paragraph above, but also when writers read over their work for the hundredth time looking for errors, but reading instead what they expect to see on the page. Indeed, try as a writer might to bring fresh eyes to a familiar text, the human brain can quickly become engaged with the far more interesting task of evaluating the argument, checking to see whether the writer did indeed make that critical point crystal clear, or how long it will be until the next break. Even worse, human brains, like human muscles, sometimes shift into a kind of autopilot–one that may be handy when we are attempting to multitask, but counterproductive when we are trying to edit our own text.
However, some of us have brains that focus on every letter, every punctuation mark, and instantly note the misspelling of homophones like they’re, there, and their or compliment and complement. Sure, good editors read for pleasure much like everyone else does—but not quite. For example, I mentally edit everything that I read, as well as most of the texts that I hear read aloud. Why? Well, because I have had a natural tendency to do so ever since I was a young child (you know, that annoying kid who points out every misspelling in menus, road signs, and recipes), and because I have had years of training and experience as an editor, a writer, a professor, and a philosopher (you know, those annoying academics who insist that you define your terms and that you spell them correctly).
Now, hopefully, you know why you need editing, and so I will move on to the next natural question: what type of editing does my work need?