For this exercise in editing I’d like to suggest that you
pull one of those old manuscripts we all have stashed around the house to use
for practice. You can work on whatever your most recent WIP is, of course, but
chances are you’ll be more aware, and more willing to be ruthless, with a piece
you’re more removed from.
There are, essentially, two kinds of editing to consider.
Both are important, and to some degree you will probably do them
simultaneously, but it is worth noting the differences between the two.
First is the editing we do to clean up the manuscript. This
includes searching for and correcting actual errors of grammar, spelling and
punctuation, as well as editing to improve the style and flow of the work. We
want the manuscripts we submit to be the very best representation of our work
possible. We don’t want any distracting conflicts or awkwardness to draw the
reader’s attention to the words instead of the content. This is the kind of
editing that these exercises will focus on.
There is, however, another critical kind
of editing, and that is the editing we do to make our manuscripts conform to
the requirements of the publisher. If you are writing on assignment, your
publisher will have given you specific guidelines for the work you are doing.
If you are writing on spec (“speculation,” meaning that you are going to submit
the manuscript without the publisher having made any commitment to buying it),
you need to figure out what the guidelines are. Many times publishers have
printed guidelines which you can find on their websites or request by mail (one
of the places where the old fashioned Self-Addressed-Stamped-Envelope, or SASE,
is still appropriate). With or without written guidelines, you will also want
to analyze other works in the series or imprint you hope to sell to.
Editing
for publisher’s requirements includes such details as word count and reading
level. It may also involve subtleties such as how often a key word repeats on a
page; stylistic preferences such as whether “Black” and “White” are capitalized
when they are being used as race-defining adjectives (and indeed, whether the
publisher uses those terms or not); and such content-preferences as whether there
are an equal number of male and female characters in a story or examples in an
article. (You should also notice style points like whether the publisher allows
or discourages complex sentences, such as that last one. Many publishers would
never print such a thing, although it is grammatically standard.)
I recommend that in your first edit you target those
publishing requirements. There’s little point in investing time and effort
perfecting your parallel structure if your publisher is going to require only
simple sentences in the final draft, and if your manuscript needs to be cut by
15% to make the word count, you don’t want to be doing that after you’ve
lovingly coiffed each phrase. So do the cutting, trimming, and rewording you
need to do to fit the publication first.
Next you want to look for the kinds of grammar errors that
often slip past us when we’re writing. First and most important step: Read your
work out loud. Really. Go in the bathroom and close the door if you need to,
but read it out loud. This does two things. First off, it slows you down and
makes you notice each individual word. You will be surprised at the things that
leap off the page when you’re reading aloud that slip past when you read
silently. The leftover “ing” from when you changed the verb structure. The
doubled prepositions. The hanging bits of dialog tags. They all become obvious
when you stumble across them as you pronounce those sentences you’ve crafted so
carefully.
And speaking of stumbling, the other advantage of reading
aloud is the number of places where you discover that a phrase is awkward or a
sentence ungrammatical because it doesn’t sound “right.” You may or may not
know the name of your error, but you can hear it – and, oftentimes fix it,
without ever actually identifying its species.
There are, however, species of errors you should be aware of
and search for. Dangling prepositions, for example, which are a particular weakness
of mine (as you will have noticed in this post, if you are sensitive to such
things.) Dangling prepositions are not the bugbears they once were, as many
grammarians have conceded that they are, in fact, indigenous to the structure
of English and were only considered “wrong” because they don’t work in Latin.
Nevertheless, in formal writing they are still to be avoided when possible,
which generally means flipping a sentence around (or just dropping the
preposition – I could have said, “flipping the sentence” and you’d have known
what I meant.)
Agreement is another common problem to look for. Plural
nouns
require plural verbs, while a singular noun
requires a
singular verb form (see?). Collectives can be tricky (and are handled differently in England than in the States) so pay particular
attention to those. And don’t rely entirely on your word processor’s grammar
program. As I write this, Word is insisting that in the sentence above I should
say “is a particular weakness” rather than “are,” presumably because it is a
singular weakness, although possibly because it thinks “example” is the subject, rather than “prepositions.” If you strip out all the intervening words,
it becomes more clear: “Prepositions
are my weakness” not “prepositions
is
my weakness” (which deliberate error, ironically, Word is ignoring). The use of
“their” and “them” to avoid saying “he/his” or “she/hers” leads inevitably to
mismatches, and highlights the other big area of agreement issues: pronouns and their antecedents. (The antecedent is the thing the pronoun is standing in for. If it was singular, then the pronoun needs to be singular. If it was male, the pronoun is male. But what if it is neutral or unknown? Standard English says "male," modern sensibilities say "Ack!" Simplest approach is to make the antecedent plural, if you can.(But see this
great post about the "singular they."
While you’re inspecting your verbs, check for tense
consistency. If your account is in the present tense then things that happened
previously are past tense, and if your account is written in the past tense,
previous action is in the past perfect– but then when you come back to your
account, did you come back to the correct tense? These kinds of inconsistencies
often creep in during rewriting.
Parallel structure is another thing to check while you’re
scanning the verbs, although it is a nice stylistic touch that applies to
adjective phrases as well. “After Johnny ate lunch, washing his hands and
playing with his toys it was time to go home.” “Susie’s favorite dress had pink
bows and gray kittens but was woolen. “ Read aloud. . .
Double check uses of the verbs “to be” and “to have:” while
both are obviously very useful in their own right, each also gets a great deal
of work as an auxiliary verb, and auxiliary verbs tend to lead to weak
expression. Everyone has heard “don’t use the passive voice” (say, “Johnny hit
Mary,” not “Mary was hit by Johnny.”) Other auxiliaries are similarly
weakening: “he has gone” vs “he went,” “she may be lost” vs “she is lost.” If
you want to mitigate the impact, then use the auxiliary, but do so
intentionally.
Adverbs and adjectives are other words that can be used to
fill in details and make a story more vivid – or that can just be filler. In
general if you can find a single word that conveys your meaning, it will be
stronger than a pair of words. And shorter, which is a good thing when you have
a strict word count!
It’s best to go over your work looking for just one of these
kinds of correction at a time. You will focus more sharply on the text that
way. (Think of it as having several different fine-toothed combs, each of which
pulls out different kinds of nits.)
Over time (and with the help of your critique group) you
will doubtless discover YOUR particular weaknesses. Be sure to do a final sweep
looking for those.
If you’re uncertain about your grammar, there are some
helpful websites you may find useful:
Purdue has great info for their students.
The University of Northern Iowa has a “Dr. Grammar” page with lots of good
things – and a
great links page.
Next time (Finally) proof-reading!
Unlike the inimitable (and insufferable) Elements of
Style, Gordon’s and Truss’ books are funny and encouraging. 
Twenty years after Gordon’s Vampire created a subgenre for
funny grammar books, Lynne Truss’ Eats, Shoots & Leaves burst on the
scene to amuse and convict all of us about our increasingly-casual approach to
punctuation. 
