Editing tips for beginners: Learn how to edit articles effectively
Read below for three simple tips to help you edit articles more easily and effectively!
Welcome back to this week’s edition of “Becoming a Better Editor”! If you are new here, welcome! I hope everyone had a nice, fun-filled weekend and is refreshed for a new week.
Last week, we discussed commonly misused words and how to overcome them. Knowing commonly misused words is important as an editor, and will come in handy for this week’s discussion tips.
This week, we are going to discuss my top three tips for learning how to edit articles more effectively. For context, this means how to maximize the amount of work you get done while minimizing the amount of time you waste.
As an editor, you will read a lot of articles, so, time is precious. It is different for every editor, but for me, I read and edit about 25 articles each week. They are all different in topic and length, which means they take different amounts of time.
Effective editing can be the difference between an “ok” article and an amazing one! First impressions are important, and as a media communications student, you do not want to turn in work littered with grammar and style mistakes. And as an editor, you certainly do not want to publish content with many grammar and style mistakes!
Now, do not feel too bad or intimidated. Everyone is human and we all make mistakes — and some mistakes are inevitable. However, these three tips should help you adopt good editing practices!
Tip 1: Read for Flow and Content First
When looking at an article for the first time — whether it is your own or someone else’s — you want to read through it for content and flow first. I know it is really tempting to fix the out of place comma or the numbers to comply with AP style rules, but try to really focus on the structure of the article when looking at it for the first time.
A blog called “Everyday Writing” by Sam H. Arnold offered some helpful tips in terms of content editing in “How to Edit Articles Easily and Effectively”. One tip Arnold offered included looking for places in the article that do not flow.
You generally want to look for flow in the headline, the first fifty words, the subheadlines and the ending according to Sean D’Souza in the article “How to Create Flow In Your Articles”. If you are able to see the flow through these four sections of the article then it is on its way to being a good one. Why? Well, D’Souza points out that if the flow can be seen in these four sections, then any potential questions a reader would ask are being answered. If you continue to encourage your writers to use the inverted pyramid method, it should help keep the flow of their articles on track.
He did mention in his article that you “do not have to read through the whole article”; however, I would have to disagree with this. It is important you read through the entirety of the article to be sure you catch grammar and AP style mistakes and ensure information is factual. More on this later.
Tip 2: Read for Grammar, Spelling and AP Style
Putting aside time to edit an article’s grammar, spelling and accuracy are very important. Many people in the news world would refer to this practice as “copyediting”.
A website called, The Journalist’s Resource: Informing the News, is a great place to find tips for young student journalists. In fact, I used this website to help me explain this tip to you!
As an editor, you have to understand that in-field reporters concentrate on reporting. This includes making calls, developing sources, conducting interviews and researching. After all this work is done, the journalist (or public relations specialist) is finally able to write the article.
An article published on the website mentioned above, “Copyediting for reporters: How to get the basics right”, written by Leighton Walker Kille, explains how all the work done by a reporter before the actual construction of the story is important. “All this effort centers on getting stories and making sure they’re timely, accurate and compelling,” explained Kille.
To begin copy editing, start by looking at each sentence individually and the words in each sentence. Kille suggests getting an index card and blocking all lines below the one you are currently reading. This way your eyes will not stray away from the line of text you are focusing on. I have used this editing tip before and it has worked great for me! (Let me know in the comments if it works for you!)
As you go with the index card, line by line, check for spelling. Kille states, “… and remember that while useful, spell-checkers aren’t always your best friend — for example, the words their, there, and they’re can be properly spelled in a sentence, and yet be completely wrong in context.” This is 100 % true in my opinion. When I first became an editor, I would miss simple things like words being spelled right but used in the wrong context due to not looking at the article line by line. It seems tedious, but it works.
Next, check for all single character punctuation. According to Kille (and I agree), pay close attention to the placement of commas, semicolons and colons, ellipses and apostrophes. Consistency in any type of writing is essential. For journalistic writing, remember AP Style is the go-to.
Upon checking the spelling and grammar, you are going to want to look at all quotation marks and parentheses. Kille states the following for checking quotation marks, “verifying that they’re [quotation marks] always properly paired. Make sure that quotes within quotes are singles, and that periods are inside the final quotation mark.” For parentheses, you are going to want to make sure that the periods are placed inside the final parentheses for complete sentences and outside for incomplete ones.
Below you will find a helpful 10 minute training video posted by Journalist’s Toolbox outlining copy editing tips and how to get better.
Tip 3: Read Article Out Loud
Now that you have read an article for content, flow, grammar, spelling and AP style, you are going to want to read the text out loud. I understand not wanting to do this. I don’t like hearing the sound of my own voice either; however, it really helps you catch mistakes that you would miss if you had not read the piece out loud. And, reading an article out loud helps you gauge how someone within your audience is going to read it.
Kate Kiefer Lee, a Forbes contributing writer, actually wrote an interesting article regarding why reading out loud works so well. Lee said, “Sometimes I get so caught up in the correctness of my own writing that I forget the most important thing: Sounding like a human.” Yes, Lee! I am guilty of the same thing!
Reading an article out loud helps you understand where the article could flow better, if the same repetitive words are popping up and if the article sounds good. What do I mean by good? Well, reading out loud helps us sound like people. I obviously want to have a connection with all of you who subscribe to my blog, as well as potential subscribers. However, it is hard to make these connections solely through an internet blog. That is why deciding what tips to provide, taking in subscriber feedback and making sure I do not sound like a robot each week is important. I will end this tip section with a quote by Lee, “But it's hard for people to connect with a robotic, stodgy, or awkward voice. Reading out loud helps us process our content as humans, not just as writers.”
Final takeaways:
This week’s top three tips included first reading an article for content and flow, then reading it for grammar, spelling and AP style, and finally, reading it out loud. I hope you find these tips to be helpful in your editing processes. Let me know what tips you plan to try and if you think they will help you in the comments.
If you have noticed in the last few weeks, I have been writing in the first person a lot more. As a student journalist who mostly writes hard news, I sometimes find it difficult to write in the first person. By engaging with you all in the first person, it is my goal that you as my subscribers view me as a human engaging in helpful conversation rather than a reporter giving you all the facts. I realize that this is my blog filled with the tips I have found to be useful as an editor. I try my best to back up my editing tips with professional research, but at the end of the day, they are still my opinion.
I hope you all have a great week, and I will be back next Monday with more tips on how to Become a Better Editor.
Hi Annalise! I really enjoyed reading your tips for editing this week. As you know, I am an editor for WLU's The Trumpet, and I often struggle with finding little mistakes because I don't always know what to look for. I think as I continue to edit stories in the future, I will try these methods in the orders you listed to help me! Thanks for some helpful tips this week, and I look forward to your next post!