Your Editing Checklist (No Matter What You’re Writing)

my-next-trip-1320575-mThe right editing job can distinguish good writing from bad. You could easily have the best text in the world, but poorly edited, it’s just going to reflect badly on you or your company. From your blog posts to your LinkedIn posts to even your press releases, it has to be perfect. Make certain you look for at least these things:

  • Content Readability: Think carefully about your audience for the piece. If you’ve used quite a bit of technical terminology, but your audience may not understand those terms, you may need to do some rewriting. Similarly, you have to consider attention span. Those visiting your Facebook page won’t care to read an entire blog post. Those visiting your blog likely won’t care to read an entire whitepaper. Attention span not only dictates the length of your post, but also whether you need short, staccato sentences, sub headings throughout, and bullet points.
  • Spelling: This is less of an issue than it once was thanks to technology, but it can still be a problem. You’ve probably seen lots of wacky auto correct errors, and in some cases, a spell checker may highlight a word that’s correctly spelled already or fail to recognize an incorrectly spelled choice.
  • Punctuation: Misplaced apostrophes, poorly used commas, and the downright murder of the semicolon spell one thing for well-written pieces: doom. In some cases, a period may be for dramatic effect. In others, though, it may show you weren’t paying attention to the grammar book in 7th grade.

If you’re concerned about your own editing abilities, have someone else take a look. Even if you grab the first person who walks by your desk, an extra eye on the content is never a bad thing, You can also email it to us. With fast turnaround times and incredibly cheap rates on editing, we’re the place to turn when you want to produce quality.

 

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