You will be able to edit a draft in three passes: structure, then sentences, then words.
Most people edit the way they tidy a messy room: they pick up whatever is closest. They fix a typo in the first line, rewrite a sentence in the second paragraph, notice the opening is weak and change it, spot a long sentence near the end, and go back to the opening again. An hour later the piece is a little different and not much better, and the writer is sick of reading it.
Editing works better in separate passes, each looking for one kind of problem. You read the piece three times, from the largest problems to the smallest. Each read is faster than the last, because the big changes are already done before you start polishing sentences.
On the first pass, ignore the sentences entirely. Read the piece as a whole and ask whether its shape works.
Is the answer, or the main point, early? For a blog post, the short answer should be in the first paragraph, as lesson 6.2 showed. For a landing page, the top should say what is offered and to whom, as in lesson 5.1.
Is anything in the wrong order? Check the problem, solution, proof, action structure from lesson 4.1. Proof that appears before the claim it supports, or a call to action before the reader knows the offer, should move.
Is anything missing? A claim with no proof, a question a reader would obviously have, or an objection from your voice-of-customer file that is never answered.
Is anything there that does not need to be? Whole paragraphs that repeat an earlier point, background the reader does not need, or a section that belongs in a different piece.
Make these changes first: move, add and cut whole sections. There is no point polishing a sentence in a paragraph you are about to delete.
On the second pass, read sentence by sentence. Look for sentences that are hard to follow, and fix them in three ways.
Split long sentences. A sentence that runs past two lines on a laptop usually holds two ideas. Give each its own sentence. "Our tutors, who all have at least three years of experience teaching upper primary maths and who are trained in our approach to catching careless mistakes, check every child's working during the lesson" becomes "Every tutor has taught upper primary maths for at least three years. During the lesson, they check every child's working."
Put the subject and verb early. Readers understand a sentence once they know who is doing what. "With the PSLE approaching and many parents already having started preparation, it is recommended that students begin revising by March" makes the reader wait for the point. "Start revising by March" puts it first. (The month here is an example.)
Turn passive sentences active where it helps. "Mistakes are caught by the tutor" becomes "The tutor catches mistakes". Active sentences are usually shorter and always say who does what. Passive is fine when the doer does not matter or is unknown, as in "the centre was founded in 2016".
On the third pass, read word by word. This is the slowest read and the one people most like to skip.
Cut filler words. "Very", "really", "actually", "basically", "in order to", "it is important to note that" and "at the end of the day" rarely add meaning. Read the sentence without them. If it means the same, they go.
Replace jargon with words your reader would use. Lesson 7.2 covers this in detail.
Check every number and every name. Is the price current? Is the date right? Is the customer's name spelled correctly, and did they give permission? Is the figure labelled as an example if it is one? A single wrong number can make a reader doubt everything else on the page, and some wrong numbers can mislead, which lesson 3.3 showed can break the rules.
When you finish writing, you know exactly what you meant. If you edit straight away, you read what you meant rather than what is on the page. Gaps in logic, missing steps and unclear sentences are invisible, because your memory fills them in.
Even a short break helps. An hour away, a walk, or switching to a different task resets your attention. Overnight is better if you have the time. When you come back, you read more like a stranger, and the problems become visible.
Priya used to write her blog posts and publish them the same evening. Now she writes in the evening and edits the next morning before the centre opens. The first time she did this, she found a paragraph in the middle of her post that she did not understand herself.
Note how many words each pass removes. The count is useful because it shows where your writing habits lie. If the first pass removes most, you tend to include material the reader does not need. If the third pass removes most, you tend to pad sentences with filler.
When Priya edited her post on tuition or practice, the structure pass removed 40 words, the sentence pass 20 and the word pass 15, taking it from 980 words to 905. Her biggest habit was writing background paragraphs before getting to the point.
For the activity, take the blog post from lesson 6.4 or the landing page from lesson 5.4 and edit it in three separate passes. Save a copy after each pass so you can count the difference, and resist the urge to fix small things during the first pass.
Edit your blog post or landing page in three separate passes and note how many words each pass removed.
Junxiong-WFG Organisation is an authorised representative of AIA Financial Advisers Private Limited (Reg. No. 201715016G).