Good editing tips!

The folks over at lifehack.org have another great article for Toastmasters...

"Improve your writing with these editing tips!"

The more speeches I write, the more important an effective editing and refining / improvement process is to the quality of my speech. This is especially critical (or at least most noticable) in Toastmasters speech contests where, assuming you win, you get a chance to give the same speech multiple times and edit/improve it between each speaking opportunity. (That also highlights a drawback of just doing a different speech every time as you move through a Toastmasters manual... you don't get to develop your editing skills as much.)

Here is what they say over at Lifehack.org...

... if writing isn’t taught well enough or often enough these days, editing is hardly taught at all. This is too bad, since editing is where the real work of writing is at. More than just proofreading, good editing improves the clarity and forcefulness of a piece.

Here’s some tips and tricks to help you make your writing more effective:

• Read out loud
• Read in reverse
• Sleep on it
• Cut, don’t add
• Justify yourself
• Eliminate pretentious language
• Throw out and get rid of unnecessary redundancies
  [blog editor's note: See the unnecessary redundancy in this tip?]
• Kill unsightly adverbs
• Avoid Passive sentences

Lifehack.org sums it up this way...

Good editing, like good writing (or, better, as part of good
writing), is an art. It takes time and practice to develop a real talent for editing, but the end result is worth it — your writing will be more alive, more effective, and ultimately more likely to be read. And that is, after all, what’s important: that your audience reads and, just as crucially, understands your
work.

Click here for the complete article!

Good suggestions for anyone writing their next speech ... or an article for the Yankee Activator !!

... or even a blog !