How to Edit Content for Clarity and Style: Ten Tips for Indian Editors

chillibreeze writer — Priya Arun

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Did you outsource content writing to India? Are you an editor for an online magazine? Are you a publisher who gets tons of free user generated content? Let us say you have tons of articles queued up for publication. The articles are all extremely fresh and original, except you have this small problem – some writers have rambled, some writers need a lot of help on their language (you don’t want to reject them on those grounds because they are extremely informative pieces) and a couple of them have even forgotten to run their articles through spell-check!

Why not publish these articles as they are? No way! The credibility of your website depends on the quality of its content.

Well, here are some tips to edit the articles and make them good enough to be published on your website, or if you are a writer, good enough to be submitted to a website/publisher:

1. Read it aloud and read it slow

The human brain has the uncanny ability to complete incomplete sentences and correct incorrect sentences automatically. So don’t trust it too much. Read the content slowly line by line so you don’t miss any errors.

2. Make use of a grammar and spell checking software

This will take care of obvious errors quickly but again don’t trust it too much either. There is a world of difference between “He is a cook” and “He is a crook” but the computer doesn’t know the difference.

3. Check your “articles”

A lot of writers tend to miss out on articles like `a’, `an’ and `the’ or use them incorrectly. Check for these errors.

4. Position the prepositions right

While prepositions are important for sentence construction, keep a tab on them. Their over-use leads to long rambling sentences like this one “As parents, we need to encourage our children to step of their houses and participate in extra-curricular activities, hobby clubs etc. and these interests, be it a sport or an art- form, as we have seen in many cases, might even end up as our child’s career choice.”.

5. Cut the redundancy again and again

“Return back”, “ran fast”, “screamed loudly” don’t emphasize and end up sounding funny. Check for repeated ideas too. A writer might repeat himself to drive home a point.

6. Active voice – way to go! Passive voice – a strict “no, no”

“My classmates don’t visit the school library anymore” sounds better than “The school library is not visited anymore by my classmates.” (Though, the thought of kids not visiting the library is not a very happy one!!)

7. Think logically

Ensure that the thought-process of the article is not jumbled. Split the ideas into paragraphs and re-arrange them if necessary. Too many sub-headings, numbers and bullet points might make a creative piece look too academic. Of course, if you are working on an informative article for the web and you would like to help increase readability, use sub-headings, numbers and bullet points to help organize information.

8. The devil is in the details

Don’t forget to look for punctuation marks and small spelling errors. Look for the proper use of words like `of’, `at’, `in’, `on’ etc. Make sure that the same font is used throughout the article.

9. Consistency is the key

Use either American or UK spellings but be consistent throughout the document. For example: Customize and Customise. If you want to hyphenate a word like ‘e-mail’, use the same format throughout.

10. Take help

If possible, get a fresh pair of eyes to go through the document.

Chillibreeze will soon be launching an editing course for Indian writers. Let us know if you are interested in taking our course.

If all the above tips sound great but you would rather outsource your editing project, get in touch with us and we can help. Chillibreeze editors have years of experience in this type of work. We have worked with many international publishing houses and websites. Apart from regular proofreading and editing services, we can also help you with creating meta tags (meta data) and making your articles search engine friendly. Contact us today to find out more about our editing and proof-reading services.

 

Chillibreeze's disclaimer: This is a contributed article and was published on Chillibreeze in April, 2010. The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author(s) and do not reflect the views of Chillibreeze as a company. Chillibreeze has a strict anti-plagiarism policy. Please contact us to report any copyright issues related to this article. The relevance of the facts and figures cited (if any) could change after a period of time.

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Related links

The Basics of Technical Writing
How to write storyboards for e-learning courses
Content writing in India: Tricks of the Trade
An Introduction to the Two Most Popular Editing Styles

 

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—About our writer: Priya writes for chillibreeze.

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