Editing

Abstract

Every piece of writing you put together needs to be thoroughly edited before being submitted to its ultimate reader. Editing is probably the most complex of all writing skills, for it involves adopting a kind of double personality. While remaining the writer in charge of what goes on the paper, when you are editing you are also a reader, i.e. a recipient or consumer of what is on that paper. And not just any reader either: you need to become the most critical, nit-picking reader that your text should ever encounter. As an editor, what you are doing is attempting to anticipate every difficulty a reader might possibly have with what you have written.