Tips for editing your writing

Undertaking a piece of writing can be daunting.  For some, putting thoughts on paper for all to see can be a nerve-wracking experience.  As a result, fear or a lack of confidence can often prevent people from even attempting to write.

However, there is a simple way to gain confidence in the quality of your writing.   Make sure that your words are saying what you want them to say.  We all think faster than we can write or type.  Consequently, most people's first attempts or drafts will be full of errors (you should have seen this piece before I checked it!).  However, the secret to achieving clear, effective and unambiguous writing is often not the act of writing itself - rather, it is because good writers are also very effective editors.

Below are a list of points that you should check each time you write and which will help you to edit your work.  If you make sure that you have considered each of these in turn, you will have gone a long way to ensuring that your writing has been edited and amended successfully.

All sentences begin with capital letters

This is an obvious point, but is something that can be easily overlooked.  Ensure that a full stop is always followed by a capital letter.

All sentences end with full stops

Often, carelessness is responsible for this common error.  Check that you have put a full stop at the end of every sentence.

You have not used commas to separate sentences

A common error that many make is to use commas where full stops should be used.  A comma can not be used to separate sentences.  If a group of words make can sense on their own (without addition) they constitute a sentence.  Such groups of words (sentences) can be separated with a full stop or joined with a conjunction, but it is not sufficient to use a comma to separate them.

Names, names of places and other proper nouns begin with capital letters

Names and names of places should be relatively easy for most people to understand and to ensure that they write with a capital letter at the beginning.  However, are you confident that you fully understand what constitutes a proper noun?  When should you use Prime Minister and when will prime minister do?  Do seasons begin with capital letters?  Is it State Library or state library?  These are the sorts of instances that require close attention.

When direct speech is used, you have started a new paragraph each time a different character speaks

Even if characters are engaged in a conversation full of very short or even one-word sentences, a new paragraph is needed each time a character begins to speak.

Direct speech is correctly punctuated

If you are using direct speech, make sure that you are familiar with all four different patterns and that you are sure where the final punctuation should be situated in relation to the speech marks.  Also, make sure that you know when capital letters need to be used and when they don't.

Commonly misspelt words are checked

Everyone will of course have their own bugbears - words that always seem to give them problems.  However, there are a few words that seem to trip up a lot of people, and they are probably worth noting here:

• there/their/they're
• it's/its
• wear/where
• were/we're
• definitely
• because

Your use of tense is consistent

It can sometimes be difficult to address the tense of writing.  Verbs are the words in English that indicate tense, so if you are unsure this is always a good place to start.  If you have some verbs that are past tense and some that are present tense, you may have a problem and so a thorough review of your verbs would be a good idea.

You have organised your writing using paragraphs

What exactly is a paragraph?  Generally speaking, a paragraph is a series of sentences on the same subject, idea or theme.  In business writing, short paragraphs are often easier to read and an effective way of communicating information succinctly, so this is an important point to keep in mind.

Cadogan and Hall are literary consultants based in Adelaide, South Australia.