Unleash Your Inner Editor
A good editor can take good writing and make it great. But every writer can expertly edit themselves with these simple tips.
1. Read the first sentence of every paragraph. If your piece is well organized, the topic sentences should come together to form a brief summary of the argument. If they don’t, strengthen those topic sentences!
2. Read your piece backwards. When copy editing, it’s easy to get caught up in the flow of your own writing. Reading your piece backwards helps you see each sentence individually, and catch mistakes you may have otherwise missed.
3. Keep a checklist of things you tend to mess up. Grammatical errors, misspelled words, misused phrases, etc. When you’re finished with a piece, run through the list. You’ll catch your own mistakes, and learn to avoid them in the future.
