Tag: Editing
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Seven Frequently Ignored Habits for Improving Your Professional Writing
A writer at work who stands out from their colleagues can always answer one question without hesitation: What’s it like working with you? (If you’re pausing right now, even briefly, that pause is worth paying attention to.) I’d like to introduce a framework. Not the software kind. A different kind of SaaS: Skills Adaptability Attitude…
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Seven Essentials for Crafting List Articles That Actually Deliver Value
A lot of smart writers despise list posts. I understand the instinct. The tabloid sites have made an art form of numbered garbage: “These 17 Celebrities Used to Be Hot.” The internet is lousy with crummy listicles, and any writer who cares about craft wants to distance themselves from the whole ugly genre. That would…
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Polish Your Drafts With the Traffic Light Editing Method
As a born-and-raised Angeleno, I’ve logged more hours in traffic than some people have logged at their jobs. The kind where you’re not moving, the AC is struggling, and you start having deep philosophical conversations with yourself about whether you actually need to get to your destination. But here’s the thing about traffic jams that…
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Polish Your Drafts: Transforming Mediocre Writing Into Exceptional Prose
The phrase “something more” should be engraved above every writer’s desk. Not as aspiration, as standard. Because here’s what I’ve noticed after years of editing: the difference between content that disappears and content that sticks isn’t the idea. It’s the edit. A mediocre idea, edited with care and stubbornness, will outperform a brilliant idea rushed…
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Mastering the Comma: Expert Guidance for Cleaner Punctuation
The comma is the brave little toaster of the punctuation family. Stalwart, unassuming, essential. And apparently two-thirds of the internet has forgotten it exists. Somewhere along the way, web writers decided commas were optional, an annoying interruption they could just leave out because “nobody cares about that stuff anymore.” Then, possibly regretting their previous choices,…
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Letting Your Inner Artist and Tough Critic Collaborate on Your Writing
Type, type, type. Backspace, backspace, backspace. Type a sentence, delete half of it, rewrite the other half, stare at it, decide it’s wrong, and start over. Sound familiar? Of course it does. Every writer knows this rhythm, the maddening two-steps-forward, one-step-back dance of trying to write and edit at the same time. It’s excruciatingly slow.…
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The Case for Having a Dedicated Editor on Your Marketing Team
If you saw my standardized test scores from high school, you’d notice something odd: very high in math, very low in verbal. Not exactly the profile you’d expect from someone who became one of the web’s most seasoned content editors. It’s a mad, mad, mad, mad world. Sort of. Content needs to communicate quickly and…
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Is Professional Editing and Proofreading Really Necessary for Your Blog?
You might expect me, a career content editor, to recommend thorough proofreading and editing for every blog on the internet. I don’t. I don’t know enough about your blog to make that blanket recommendation. What I can do is give you a framework for evaluating your own publication and deciding whether more rigorous editing would…
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How Refined Authors Adapt Frameworks Without Losing Originality
Templates are like cilantro. People either worship them or regard them with deep suspicion, and both camps are wrong. The lovers treat templates like vending machines, insert formula, extract result. They chase gimmicks and headline plug-and-play frameworks without doing the thinking underneath. The result is content that looks like everyone else’s content, which is another…
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Four Intelligent Routines to Elevate How You Absorb Information
It was 9:00 p.m. on a Friday. I pulled into my driveway, pressed the garage door opener, and nothing happened. Dead battery. I knew I’d need a nine-volt eventually, so I drove to Target, which was convenient, because I also “needed” trash bags, candles, and whatever else the end-cap displays would convince me was essential.…
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Forty Fast Revision Strategies Every Writer Should Know
I watch an unreasonable amount of YouTube videos about how to clean a bathroom. Not clean my bathroom, that would be productive. I watch other people clean bathrooms. I study their techniques. I admire their product recommendations. I absorb their satisfaction at a gleaming tile. Then I do nothing. My bathroom remains exactly as it…
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Eleven Frequent Grammar Errors Writers Keep Making
Let’s get something out of the way: I’m not here to be your grammar scold. Writing that’s conversational and engaging will always serve you better than writing that’s technically flawless but stiff enough to crack. Some of the best sentences ever written break rules on purpose. Outside of academic and professional contexts, writing that’s easier…
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Eight Powerful Revisions That Turn Average Writing Into Exceptional Prose
I once spent forty-five minutes editing a single paragraph. Not because it was broken. Because it was almost right, and “almost right” is the most dangerous state a piece of writing can inhabit. It lulls you into complacency. It whispers, “Good enough.” It is not good enough. Here’s the uncomfortable truth most writing advice won’t…
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Drop the Fluff and Start Producing Sharper Prose Today
“Composition is a discipline; it forces us to think. If you want to ‘get in touch with your feelings,’ fine, talk to yourself; we all do. But, if you want to communicate with another thinking human being, get in touch with your thoughts. Put them in order; give them a purpose; use them to persuade,…
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Developing Your Writing Personality Without Going Overboard
I once read a blog post that opened with three exclamation points, deployed the word “amazeballs” without irony, and included so many emoji that my screen looked like a teenager’s phone had exploded across it. The topic? B2B software implementation. The writer was trying to be lively. I respect the impulse. But somewhere between “conversational”…
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Craft Excellent Blog Posts: Seven Actionable Tips for Today’s Creators
I used to think writing was like magic, the kind where you pull a fully formed rabbit out of an empty hat. So I’d sit down at my keyboard, stare at a blank screen, and wait for the rabbit. Sometimes for hours. The rabbit, unsurprisingly, rarely appeared. Eventually I learned that productive writers don’t think…
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Coping With Proofreading Fatigue After a Career of Catching Errors
Me: “Hey, Brain, time to proofread.” My Brain: “We don’t want to.” Me: “This article isn’t complete until we proof it.” My Brain: “Our eyes are tired.” Me: “There might be a mistake I want to correct. Or I might find ways to make it even better.” My Brain: “We want to eat chocolate chips.”…
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Adopting Hemingway’s Bold and Simple Writing Style
Whenever I tell business people to write like Hemingway, someone inevitably says: “Hey, I’m no Hemingway!” To which the only reasonable response is: exactly. You’re not. Neither am I. That’s not the point. The point is that Hemingway chose to eschew obfuscation at every turn, to write simply and clearly instead of hiding behind flowery…
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A Five-Phase Writing Workflow That Eliminates Three Common Frustrations
I once asked a room full of writers to name their biggest struggle. The answers poured in, dozens of them, but they all collapsed into the same three complaints: I can’t get started. I can’t stop rambling. I can’t finish. Sound familiar? (If it doesn’t, congratulations, you’re either lying or you don’t write.) Here’s the…
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A Detail-Oriented Writer’s Twelve-Step Preflight Guide for Blog Posts
I once watched a writer accidentally publish a half-finished draft to a site with six figures of daily traffic. The post went live with a placeholder headline that read “WORKING TITLE, FIX THIS.” It sat there, in all its glory, for forty-seven minutes before anyone noticed. That writer was not me. (This time.) But it…