Do you edit your writing before you post on Steemit? I know some people don't, which is why I picked this topic.
If you attended the class, or read the lesson afterward, you'll notice I use a different structure in this summary. There was a lot of detail and examples in the lesson, but in hindsight, I felt I could do a better job of presenting it if I changed a few things. It's all the same stuff, just put together in a way that makes more logical sense and will hopefully make it easier for you to review.
The self-editing tips are presented here in two categories: Basic and Advanced. What those two words mean should be obvious, and the table of contents tells you which techniques are in each group.
- The inspiration
- Basic editing tips
-- Time is your friend
-- Read it out loud
-- Always check the preview - Advanced editing tips
-- Reconsider cliches
-- Did you say it more than once?
-- Sneaky phrases
-- Avoid too much glue
-- For perfection, read it backward
-- Question about adverbs
The inspiration
Some of the errors that inspired this lesson are easy to fix, like typos. Take "5his" for example. This usually happens when someone meant to type "this," but their finger hit the "5" key that's above the "t" key by accident. It's likely the person was typing on a mobile device of some sort where the keyboard is smushed together. Or maybe they're a lousy typist. Either way, that kind of error can stop a reader because it isn't expected. But it is straightforward to fix, if you can see it.
The problem is that editing your work, or "self-editing", is hard. We become blind to what we've written because we've written it! Our brain and eyes think we know what it says. So if you take the time to re-read what you've written, you can still miss some obvious things.
In previous classes, I've mentioned using spelling and grammar checkers. They will take care of some issues, like the example I used above. But they don't find everything, and they can be wrong.
The techniques I'm sharing with you in this lesson can supplement any automated checkers you use, but can also be used instead of them too.
Basic editing tips
The tips in this section are easy to do. They are the sort of things you should do for every post.
Time is your friend
The BEST thing you can do to improve your self-editing is to put aside your post for 24 hours or more. But that isn't always practical - especially if you're like me trying to get something posted every day and working hard in the last few minutes before midnight.
If you can't put it away for at least a day, do it for as long as you can - go for a walk, get a snack, make some coffee, do laundry - whatever you can to give yourself a break from it.
When you come back, you'll notice things you didn't before.
Read it out loud
Another important step to take is to read your post out loud.
When you do this, you activate something different in your brain, and you'll catch errors you missed when you were reading. If you stumble over it while reading out loud, then your readers probably will too.
You may feel silly doing this, but it will help. If you're in a coffee shop or public space and can't or are afraid to read it out loud, try to do it by moving your lips and whispering. But at least move your lips.
Always check the preview!
Posting on Steemit isn't easy. You need to use Markdown to make your posts look nice. And many people cut and paste their text from another editor. There are lots of ways you can make mistakes when creating your post.
This is why you should ALWAYS read the preview before you click the "Post" button.
By looking at the preview, you can easily spot formatting errors, and you might detect other mistakes that you didn't see in the plain text.
You can always edit after you post, but how many people will see it before you do?
Advanced editing tips
Following the basic editing tips above will help make your posts cleaner, and easier to read. But if you're interested in working on becoming a better writer, think about trying some of these advanced tips.
Reconsider cliches
A cliche is a word or phrase that is overused and according to Google "betrays a lack of original thought." And that is usually a bad thing.
Using them is considered "lazy" because there is almost always a better, more unique way of saying something that will take your writing up a notch (see, there's one now!).
The good thing about them though is that they are universally understood - within the same cultural or language background at least. If you use them, your audience will likely get what you're trying to say.
Some examples from English are:
- "only time will tell"
- "in the nick of time"
- "avoid it like the plague"
- "low hanging fruit"
- "at the end of the day" (Thanks @evlachsblog!)
and the list goes on.
If you find you're using a cliche, you'll have to decide if it is appropriate for what you're doing or if you should rewrite it. If you have lots of them, definitely rewrite most, if not all, of them.
Did you say it more than once?
Sometimes we write more than we have to. We want to make sure our reader knows what we're trying to say, so we tell them, then tell them again, and again...but in different ways. But when you do this, the reader can get bored, or confused, and decide not to finish the post or give you an upvote.
I see it quite frequently when writers are trying to reach a specific word count, but either can't find anything else to say on the topic or are too lazy to do more research.
Often it happens just because we're pushing out words as we think of them. And that's ok. That's what first drafts are all about. A second, third or fourth draft though, should be more organized and without unnecessary repetition.
I went looking on Steemit to see if I could find a good example of this and I did, sort of. I chose a random post from the trending page that at first look felt hard to read, as if the author was making the same point over and over.
It isn't that the post is poorly written - though it is a bit too wordy for my tastes. But it was the feeling they repeated himself/herself that made me choose it. I'm not mentioning the author because I don't want to single anyone out in a negative way. Also, I wholeheartedly agree with the point the author is making. I just wish it had been made differently, so it was easier to read.
I debated whether or not to include all the paragraphs I used for demonstration in my class. For this summary, I'm only going to share the first three because I think that is sufficient to make my point. Here they are:
- One of the things that we all need to work on and develop is without a doubt our communication skills. We might take them for
granted at times, and believe that just knowing some fancy words will
help us convey our message, but the truth is very different from that
and the best kind of communicators are actually the most efficient
listeners.- It sounds counter intuitive, we think of communication as speaking, we equate it, but thinking of it in such simplistic terms tends to
ignore the other half of the equation. We need to know the language we
must speak to move forward. I’m not using the word language in a
traditional sense here, I’m actually referring to the angle, the
perspective and worldview of the person who is participating of the
conversation with you.- What I’m trying to say is that by becoming better listeners we can attempt to find a common ground that we can use to establish a healthy
conversation. You would be surprised to know how many disagreements
come from semantics and not so much the substance of the discussion or
debate.
The paragraph numbers weren't in the original post. I added them for reference.
In paragraph #1, the author is telling us that if you want to be a better communicator, you need to be a better listener. It's a fine opening paragraph.
Paragraph #2 tells us we need to understand the "language" of the person we're talking to. It's a little confusing. I had to read it a few times to get it. But that might be my sleep deprivation kicking in.
Then we get to paragraph #3. And here is where the repetition starts. My confusion with paragraph #2 is apparently expected because it begins with "What I'm trying to say...." If you ever feel the need to write that phrase, it's a signal that you don't feel you've adequately explained things already, so you're going to try to do it again.
And that's what this author does. In fact, I would argue you could throw out the first two paragraphs and begin the post with the first sentence of #3 and be good to go:
"By becoming better listeners, we can attempt to find common ground that we can use to establish a healthy conversation."
Ok. So that's a fragment of a sentence, but reword it to be something like:
"When we develop better listening skills, we're able to find common ground we can use to establish healthy conversations."
It's still a little awkwardly worded because I'm trying to rewrite it without changing it too much. But you can hopefully see that the one sentence encapsulates what the previous two paragraphs were attempting to say. The rest of the paragraphs were redundant in terms of their concept and content even though they used entirely different words.
Identifying this type of issue with your writing is quite difficult. That's why I have it in the advanced category. But if you're able to put your posts aside, as suggested in the tips above, you'll have a better chance of spotting it.
Sneaky phrases
Another thing you should look out for is redundant phrases. They're ones that are commonly used, and most everyone accepts without even thinking about them. But that's why they're sneaky. You probably use them all the time even though they aren't correct.
One of my favorite examples is "past history."
By definition, history is the past. So adding the word "past" before history doesn't make sense. But the phrase is commonly used.
Another example used everywhere is "free gift." It works in advertising/marketing because everyone gets excited at both words. But last I checked, gifts are supposed to be freely given. So a free gift is a redundant phrase.
If you google "redundant phrase" you'll find lots of resources listing examples. Here is one with 200 "common" ones:
[https://www.thoughtco.com/common-redundancies-in-english-1692776]
These may be especially hard to spot, so reading through the list on the website might get your brain familiar with what to look for. And this tip isn't that important I don't think, but it is something else that will make your writing better and more refined - and probably more enjoyable to your readers.
Avoid too much glue
Why am I talking about glue in a post about writing? It's a term used to describe words that connect sentences together. Usually, they are small words such as like, to, that, and, the and less. Sometimes they are short phrases too. Those are just examples though. I don't think there is a definitive list.
Too many glue words in your sentences make them hard to read. Here is an example sentence I took from a steemit article (different than the one I used previously).
So in the video above I want to tell you about some of the things I've
gained and learned from Steemit so far, what I hope to achieve on this
amazing platform, and what projects I'll be focusing on for the
future.
It's not a horrible sentence, but it is a little difficult to read. And I'll admit probably not the best example, but I wanted relevant ones from Steemit.
"So" at the beginning of a sentence is extra. I, however, do it all the time! It's one of the words I use too often.
A glue phrase in that sentence is "I want to tell you."
There is a video in this blog where I presume the author actually tells what he says he'll tell you. He doesn't "want" to tell you, he's telling you he told you in the video. That's an even more complicated sentence, but hopefully, you get my point.
The rest of the sentence includes phrases like "so far" which are also extra as he can't tell you about what he'll learn in the future - but he can tell you what he plans to learn in the future.
Here is how I would rewrite the sentence to be more powerful and concise:
In the video above, I talk about some things I've gained, learned, and my goals on this amazing platform.
In my sentence, even the word "above" is probably unnecessary. There is only one video so it couldn't be confused with the video "below" for example.
I'm also giving him the benefit of the doubt that what he "gained" and what he "learned" are two different things.
And what he hopes to achieve and the projects he'll focus on can be summed up better as "goals" or maybe "plans" if that fits better.
@evlachsblog offered another version of the sentence:
"In the video, I talk about some things I've gained and learned, and my goals on this amazing platform."
Her sentence is a much-improved version as well. Though, we both agreed that the "and" between "gained" and "learned" can also be considered an extra glue word.
If you are using a tool that provides you with readability statistics like the F/K score, or "grade" level, that can give you an indication of having complex sentences. If the score is high, then you might have too many glue words. But you might also have multisyllabic words. Or both.
Unless you evaluate your work sentence by sentence, you won't know if glue words are your problem when you have a high F/K score. You need to self-edit and look for them.
For perfection, read it backward
When a post is super, super important and you need to have it perfect, read it backwards.
This takes a lot of time when you're trying to edit hundreds or thousands of words, which is why I say only to do it when it matters to you enough to spend the time.
Just like reading aloud activates something different, trying to read backward does something different again.
We aren't used to doing it, so we have to look at each word carefully. And that focus finds errors that can be missed using all of the other techniques. For example, repeated words.
The other day I wrote something, edited, reread it, then asked my daughter to look it over for me. She found I had the word "the" repeated twice in a row. Now usually a grammar checker should catch that but either it didn't, or I missed it.
I've seen studies on reading that show we don't see every letter of the words we read. Letters can be reversed or even missing and if we're familiar enough with them our minds will fill in the blanks or ignore the errors - and can skip over words like "the the" or "of of."
If you can't have someone else edit for you, and you want to spend the time, reading backward helps combat our minds laziness (or ingeniousness).
Question about adverbs
@evlachsblog asked about the use of adverbs.
Too many adverbs are certainly likely to actually impact your writing. HaHa!
So yes, you should check for overuse of adverbs too. Way back in one of my first classes I recommended the Hemingwayapp for that, but Grammarly will check for them also.
I tend to be less strict on adverb use than most, especially when blogging. I believe in conversational writing, and people use adverbs when speaking. Including some in posts makes them feel more natural - but overdoing it makes the post feel fake like a used car salesman or something.
I want to reiterate, these advanced tips are hard things to do when self-editing. But the more time you put between first draft and your editing the more success you'll have.
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