You will edit a piece with a checklist, a readability tool and a test reader, and compare before and after.
Editing your own work by feel is hard. You know what you meant, so everything reads as clear. You have read it so many times that you no longer see it. This exercise gives you three outside checks: a checklist, a readability tool and a reader who has never seen the piece. Each catches problems the others miss.
Allow about 30 minutes. You need one piece you have written in this course, such as the blog post from lesson 6.4 or the landing page from lesson 5.4, and a copy of it saved as the "before" version.
Work through the piece against this checklist, one item at a time. Each item draws on an earlier lesson.
Answer early: is the main point or answer in the first paragraph, or at the top of the page? (lessons 5.1 and 6.2) One idea per paragraph: does each paragraph make one point? If a paragraph changes subject halfway, split it. Average sentence length: count the words in ten sentences from different parts of the piece and divide by ten. Set yourself a target, and look hard at any sentence much longer than it. The lessons in this course aim for a median sentence under 18 words. Active voice: does each sentence say who does what? Turn passive sentences active where the doer matters. (lesson 7.1) Plain words: have you replaced vague and inflated words with specific ones your reader would use? (lesson 7.2)
Fix what each item turns up before moving on to the next.
Here is the average sentence length check in practice. Priya took ten sentences from her blog post and counted 14, 22, 9, 31, 17, 12, 26, 15, 8 and 19 words. The total was 173, so the average was 17.3 words. That was close to her target, but the 31-word sentence and the 26-word sentence stood out. She split the first into two and cut the second to 18 words.
A readability tool reads the piece and highlights sentences that may be hard to follow. Hemingway Editor is one example. It highlights long and complex sentences, passive voice and adverbs. Most word processors have their own checks too, such as grammar suggestions and readability statistics you can switch on in the settings.
Paste your piece into the tool, or switch on the checks, and look at what it highlights. Each highlight is a sentence to look at again.
Tools point. You decide. A readability tool does not understand your reader or your meaning. It counts words and spots patterns. Some of what it flags will be real problems. Some will be fine.
A long sentence that lists items in a natural order may be perfectly clear. A passive sentence such as "The centre was founded in 2016" is better than the active version, because nobody cares who founded it. A short sentence the tool loves may be too blunt for the moment.
For each highlight, read the sentence again and ask whether a reader would stumble on it. If yes, rewrite it. If no, leave it. Do not chase a score. A piece that gets a perfect score and loses its meaning is worse than one that keeps a few long sentences that work.
Priya's tool flagged 11 sentences. She rewrote seven and left four, including a list of what to bring to a trial lesson that the tool called "very hard to read" and every parent understood at once.
Find a test reader in your target group who has not seen the piece. Ask them to read it, then tell you in one sentence what it says. Write their sentence down word for word.
Then compare it with what you meant. Before you show the piece, write your own one-sentence summary, so you have something to compare against.
If the reader's summary matches yours, the piece is clear. If it is close but misses something, that part needs more emphasis or should come earlier. If it is about something else entirely, the structure is wrong, and you need to go back to the first pass from lesson 7.1.
Priya's own summary was: "Practice at home is enough if your child understands the method, and tuition helps if they don't." Her reader said: "You can check at home whether your kid needs tuition by asking them to explain a question." That was close, and it showed that the at-home check at the end was the part that stuck. Priya moved a short version of it into the first paragraph.
Count the words in the "before" and "after" versions. Note the change. Keep the completed checklist, the number of sentences the tool flagged and how many you changed, and your reader's one-sentence summary beside your own.
Priya's post, already edited in three passes, went from 905 words to 870. More useful than the word count was the reader's summary, which showed her what the post actually taught.
Choose a piece for the activity that a real customer will read soon, so the work goes straight into use. Save the "before" version first, because the comparison is half of what you learn from it.
Edit one piece with the checklist and a readability tool, then record the before and after word count and your test reader's one-sentence summary.
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