Words to Edit By
Let’s get into the weeds a little on editorial realism in practice. How do you decide a piece of writing is good enough for its intended purpose and audience right now?
Writers who aren’t professional editors need to be able to distinguish good from bad (or better from worse) editorial suggestions. You can get outside input, sure. But not all editors are equally skilled (or equally skilled at all kinds of editing). AI tools don’t always get it right.
That brings us back to the original question: how do you tell what’s good enough for now? It’s all about expectations—yours and your intended readers’.
A Realist Take
The realist, “good enough” school of editing does not mean low-quality editing! It means, in essence, editing quality appropriate to the situation. When you’re talking about a book manuscript or an article for print publication, readers reasonably have high expectations—and post-publication edits are problematic or impossible. In those cases, the appropriate quality is as high as you have time and budget to achieve!
Writers have two main places to look for help with editorial quality: human editors and toasters their computer-based counterparts. Of course, human and AI editors are not all equally skilled and knowledgeable when it comes to recognizing and refining the intricacies, nuances, and creative expression of written English.
It’s quite the conundrum, really. Non-professional and novice writers, including those writing in a genre in which they’re not widely read, know they need help. But because they’re non-professional and novice writers, they don’t know how to tell which help is “good enough,” either in general or when it comes to specific bits of editorial advice.
Editing is a function of time, knowledge/skills, and money. The less you have of any of those resources, the more of the others you need. Beyond my deep reservations about AI, that’s ultimately why I started this community: to help folks with the knowledge/skills part of the equation. The more you understand how written English works and have a structured framework for making editorial decisions, the more confidently you can make use of help, whether it’s human or machine. That helps you make better use of your time and money—and it makes for better writing.
For Instance
Here are some of the questions you can ask yourself to that end:
Does it meet your / the author’s basic expectations? (Will you / the author feel good about others reading this? Alternatively, will you feel embarrassed by the quality?)
Does it achieve your / the author’s basic intended purposes?
Will it meet the audience’s basic expectations? (Alternatively, will the intended readers likely be disappointed in some way?)
Have you reread it at least once to ensure no glaring errors or likely points of confusion? (If you tend to reread along the way, “editing as you go,” a start-to-finish reread may not be worth your while for something low-stakes, like a casual text or email or a rough draft.)
How long would another pass of editing take? How much do you reasonably expect the manuscript to improve with another pass? (Experience helps in answering those questions, especially the latter. But you can get an idea of room for improvement by starting another pass through, as a sample, and seeing how dense your edits are.) Does the incremental improvement seem worth the time?
If you don’t have time for a full pass through, are there specific aspects in need of improvement that you have time to skim or spot-check for?
If you’re editing for someone else, do the terms of your work require further editing? Is there budget available to support further editing?
These sorts of questions help you to recognize the real-world constraints on your editing and make reasonable, defensible choices. Of course, to answer these questions, you need an understanding of the purposes, audience, and expectations involved. Thankfully, as with so many things in life, editorial discernment tends to come quicker with experience.
Godspeed and happy rewriting, folks!
Article: Your adventures in editing begin here!
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