I believe that we write in three stages–we act as playful inventors on the page, move on to the task of shaping our experience, and finally edit what we have written. Although these stages sometimes overlap a bit, on the whole, they are best thought of as separate.

Just as we must never short circuit the time we give ourselves to do our work in the first two stages of writing, we must also, when it is time, give the editing stage its due. If your piece is to go out into the world and make a clear impact from the page alone, you must look into the conventions of punctuation, capitalization and paragraphing.

If you are among those who never want to deal with this part of the writing process, perhaps you can focus on the fact that “dotting your i’s and crossing your t’s” (plus a bit more) will pay off by helping you gain a wider audience.  When an essay, poem or memoir feels fully formed and is making contact with others emotionally as well as intellectually, it can become fun (truly!) to work on the surface issues that will make it a welcome guest in the world.  Try to think of it like decorating a cake after it’s baked (not the tastiest part but eye catching) or addressing the envelope after the letter you wrote meets your approval (another step you take for granted before the job is done).  There is some satisfaction to reap.

But it is also important not to start the final editing process too soon as it dampens the inventive writer spirit that wants to play.  As much as many dread the editing process, others have trouble keeping the desire to do sentence editing at bay long enough to invite the playful and sculpting parts of the writing self to the page.  It might help to think of things this way:  if you purchase a puppy from a new litter, you have to wait until the puppy is weaned before you bring it home and play with it.  You would not want to take the puppy away too soon and begin the discipline process.

When you are ready to face the editing it often seems complicated because there are so many books on the subject, from the famous Strunk and White Elements of Style created by Cornell professors who discovered there wasn’t much standardization to the many thesauri and Modern Language Association (MLA) style guides by every major publisher.  As a frequent freshman composition teacher, I have developed some easy explanations for common editing questions. Remember, you only have to do so much to please acquisition editors.  Once your piece of writing is accepted, a copy editor who knows all the rules and style guidelines will take over and by then you’ll be well into other writing projects. Here are my easy-to-understand editing rules, and at the end of the article I have included resources that I find helpful.

Spelling and Frequently Confused Words
Never let a document leave your computer without using a spell-checking program; however, that is no substitute for your own careful read.  Look very carefully for words that sound alike that you may have used improperly.  Spell checkers won’t pick up that you have used they’re for there or our for hour.  You might easily write the word write when you mean right. And of course there are the typos that spell check will not find–i.e. missing the ending “n” in then and writing the on the page.

Review contractions and know when to add the apostrophe and when not to.  You add the apostrophe to show you mean it is, you are, they are, etc.  You do not add the apostrophe when you mean possession as in its hair, your hair and their hair.

Other times you might make word choice errors are with frequently confused words like accept and except.  Accept means to receive something willingly.  Except means but or excluding.

Affect and effect are two other frequently confused words.  Affect is a verb that means to influence and effect is most usually a noun, which means a result or an impact. You can affect a person’s feelings and then have an effect on that person.

There are many more frequently confused words, of course, and one of the books listed at the article’s end is The Least You Need to Know About English, which contains a good list of them with explanations.

Capitalization
A common question about capitalization has to do with when to capitalize directions. When we are naming regions of a country, the South, the Northeast, etc., we capitalize the words but when we are giving directions, we do not:  Turn south as the intersection and then east at the stoplight.

Special names are capitalized.  This includes places, titles, and people.  Penelope, Vice-President of Internal Affairs, spoke on the phone from the West Coast.  She talked to us about the subjects one must take to get a good foundation for a good future in the field of finance:  calculus, statistics, and accounting.

Although a title with a name is always capitalized–President Lincoln and Governor Davis– a descriptive phrase offering occupational or ranking information does not require capital letters:  Jeffrey Kensington, a doctor.

Father, Mother, Grandmother, etc. are capitalized when they appear without pronouns, in other words, when they replace a name.  When writing our father, your mother or my grandmother, for instance, do not use capital letters.

Words in titles are capitalized unless they are the small words a, an, the, or and to and they do not come at the beginning:  “To Live or to Die.”  In addition, prepositions and conjunctions that connect words will not be capitalized if they are not beginning words and are fewer than five letters: “Take a Clue from the Kitchen.”

Paragraphing
After frequently confused words and capitalization rules, many have lingering questions about paragraphing.  Magazines and newspapers have allowed paragraphs to grow shorter and shorter, leaving them only one sentence long at times.  I believe in well-balanced paragraphs that a reader can settle into.  A one-sentence paragraph is a jarring event and must be used sparingly!  When you are writing, notice your thought patterns–how they continue and vary and stray and come together. Make your paragraphs indicate these patterns.  On a word processor it is easy to play with paragraphs, joining sentences into big blocks and then breaking the big blocks up if they seem too overwhelming on the page.  Your finished product should have a nice look about it. I know that is subjective, but I believe the eye can help here.  Just as we like sculpture to have curves and bulges and sleek areas too so we enjoy this on the page before us.

It is very important to make sure paragraphs flow one to another, whether through images, phrase repetitions or time phrases or spatial indications.  When you get response to your drafts, your readers may let you know if your transitions lose or jar them.  Ask people their opinion if you are unsure that you have kept them with you as you move to a new paragraph.

It used to be that the art of the paragraph required a topic sentence and a concluding sentence. Although that is too confining for today’s essayists, the idea that a paragraph is something to settle into is still valuable to the writer.  Remember, essays expand moments in experience.  To do this, the paragraphs inside the essays can take some space on the page.

Quick Answers to Some Niggling Questions
Some things may have changed since you were in school.

When do we say “whom” and when do we say “who”?  Don’t worry about it–we can always say who now.

Is it bad to end your sentence with a preposition as in, “Who did you give it to?”  Not really, we do it all the time now.

How do I know which form of the pronoun to use when?  I, he, she, you, they, we and it all work as subjects, the agents performing the action.  Me, him, her, you, them, us and it all work as the receivers of the action:  She gave them and me a gift.  She and I gave him and you a gift.

Use hyphens if words join together as adjectives describing a noun:  three-year-old Jason James or the much-loved TV program or top-notch students or if they become a noun:  stick-in-the mud or hole-in-the-wall or three-year-old.  More or less is a phrase that doesn’t become a noun; hence no hyphens.

Hyphens are also used when the word would mean something else without the hyphen.  For example, there is a great difference between resign and re-sign in the case of a ball player.  The use of hyphens in other words or upon other occasions is tricky and most editors looking to accept your work will not know these rules themselves.

Do we spell out numbers or use Arabic numerals?  The rule of thumb used to be that non-technical writing required that numbers be written out and that two-word numbers have hyphens.  Technical writing called for writing out numbers below ten and using numerals for those numbers above ten unless the number started the sentence off.  In my work as an editor, even in non-technical writing, I now use numerals for numbers over ten that do not start a sentence.

Punctuation
Learn to use punctuation correctly in quotes and dialog. Also, learn where the commas go in complex sentences and where they do not go.

Commas go after introductory clauses or phrases: When the moon rises, some dogs like to howl.  After my bedtime, the moon rises.

Commas go before and, or, but, yet or nor in compound sentences, except when the first independent clause is very short:  The river is high and the currents are strong, but he wanted to raft down its waters despite the high risk.

Commas set off nonessential information that describes someone or something. Nonessential means that readers would know the subject or object even without the extra information because the subject or object is a proper noun:  Charles Heston, a well-known actor, announced he has Alzheimer’s disease.

If readers wouldn’t know which group or person or thing the writer is designating without the modifying information, don’t use the commas:  The group who had never written an essay reported to room 101 while the group that had experience writing essays reported to room 102.

Commas divide items in a list, but a comma is optional before the and that joins the last item to the list:  For his camping trip, Jason James, an equipment enthusiast, packed his tent, sleeping bag, flashlight, water bottles, free dried food, a change of clothes and a floating cooler.

Learn to use semicolons when one sentence ends and another begins if you are not going to use a periods:  No matter when she and I get together, we always start our conversation the same way; we always talk about our hair.

Always use a semicolon before however and before therefore and moreover if they start an independent clause.  I want to go to college; however, I can’t afford the tuition. Notice that the however, which is introductory in its independent clause, is followed by a comma.

Learn to handle quotes. Whatever someone says is in double quotes, “Like this.”  The punctuation at the end of the sentence goes inside the quote marks.  If the speaker is also quoting someone else the quote marks around the speaker’s quotes are single quote marks:  “That’s what the man said to me. He said, ‘Turn right and then left.'” Notice that there is a comma before the quoted dialog.

If the dialog is broken up by an insertion it looks like this:  “That’s,” Jamie screamed, “what the man said to me. He said, ‘turn right then turn left.'”

Each time a new speaker speaks, start a new paragraph.

When quoting others’ words apart from dialog, put those in quotes if they come to three lines of type or less in your document.  If they come to four or more lines put a colon after your last word and then indent the quoted lines (MLA style).

Dangling and Misplaced Modifiers
It is really easy in English to create phrases that are meant to modify a subject and then forget to put the subject in, leaving the modifier describing something ridiculous: “Running around the neighborhood, a fire flamed in the garbage can ” should be written as “Running around the neighborhood, I saw flames in a garbage.”   “At sixteen, my father gave me the keys to our family car” should be “When I was sixteen, my father gave me the keys to our family car” because your father was not sixteen when he gave you the keys.  In your final reading of your work, ask yourself whether your phrases describe the action of the being or object they were meant to describe.  “While answering the doorbell, the water in the pot of simmering vegetables boiled away and the vegetables burned,” is not okay.  “A purse was found by the detective weighing about twenty pounds” doesn’t work unless the detective is a leprechaun.

Passive Construction
Nothing slows an essay up like passive construction. Passive construction makes reading an essay feel like starting down a familiar road only to find you must navigate around orange cones and reduce your speed.  We use passive construction because we either think it sounds more formal or because we are self-consciously aware that we are imagining something and writing about it.  “The event was attended by the company’s staff” would be much better stated this way: “The company staff attended the event.”  Having a clear subject in your sentence makes everything more immediate for the reader.  “At the event, the tables were decorated with three-foot wide buckets of flowers” goes down easier and is more dramatic this way: “Three-foot wide buckets of flowers decorated each table.”

Non-essential words and phrases
Never bulk up the writing just to hear the sound of your voice going on longer.  I once worked with a woman who said “literally” and “in my mind” so much that I never paid attention to what she said.  There are few occasions upon which you will have to remind people that you are speaking literally.  Usually you are; figurative language is the exception, isn’t it?  I believe, in my mind, and truly or very unique are among other often used phrases that simply clutter writing up and call unnecessary attention to the fact that someone is re-telling an event.  In the case of very unique, the adverb qualifying the adjective negates the meaning of the adjective–to be unique is to be one of a kind, in essence, not by degree!  Our world is filled with meaningless phrases. Keep them out of your writing unless you are being intentional with the use of them.

Modern writing aims to be assessable and to sound like normal everyday speech. Sometimes we give in to the temptation to let “folksy” phrasing make our essays seem accessible and speech-like.  Usually, instead of helping the tone, these phrases hinder it and make our writing harder to understand.  Delete phrases like I myself, that’s another story, in order to and in a sense.  In addition, be careful about the using the word would.  Why make things conditional when you can avoid that uncertainty?  For instance, the sentence, “Following my recommendations will help you create manuscripts editors enjoy reading,” is stronger than “If you could follow my recommendations, editors would enjoy reading your manuscripts.”

One more note:  the abbreviation etc. finds its way into our writing too frequently.  If you can think of three examples of what you are listing, write them rather than using etc. You sound more astute and less lazy that way.

Subject-verb agreement
This is important!  Sometimes we start our sentences with a singular subject and by the time we get to the verb, we use a plural one!  Pay attention to the agent in your sentence and to the agent’s action.  In the sentence, “Each of the writers has a notebook,” each is singular so I use the verb has.  “Some of the writers have notebooks” has the plural subject some; therefore, the sentence uses the verb have, which agrees in number with a plural subject.

Words like dozen, crowd, family, and class are singular.
Both, all, and most are plural.
Everybody, one, and no one are singular.

Noun-pronoun referents
When you use a pronoun it must have a clear noun to refer to.  It replaces that noun in its part of the sentence.  “I’ve always liked comedy and have decided to train to become one” uses the pronoun one to mean comedian but since the noun that one refers to isn’t in the first part of the sentence, the pronoun has no clear referent.  The sentence can be fixed to read, “I’ve always liked comedy and have decided to train to become a comedian,” or “I’ve always like comedians and have decided to train to become one.”  Although the meaning of sentences without clear pronoun referents may still be clear, it is much smoother to read sentences when the referent is clear.

A most confusing pronoun problem in our language today has to do with gender.  Our convention used to be a default he.  “Whenever someone wants to make a call, he can pull a cell phone from his pocket” sounds funny in today’s world.  Some grammarians have decided that the plural but genderless they can replace the singular gender identified pronoun even when a singular pronoun is called for:  “Whenever someone wants to make a call, they can pull a cell phone from their pocket.”  This grates on my ears because they and their are plural and someone is singular.  I reword my sentences to avoid this problem: “Whenever people want to make calls, they can pull their cell phones from their pockets.”  If I absolutely do not want to change from the singular, I usually say she instead of he.  This is because I am a woman writing; I might expect a man writing to choose he unless he thought his audience was primarily female.

Additional Resources
If you aren’t yet satiated, I recommend that you browse some sources I’ve included below. They are my favorite sources for editing because of their accessibility, the simplicity with which they impart information, and because they link to more information:

• Grammatically Correct: The Writer’s Essential Guide to Punctuation, Spelling, Style, Usage and Grammar by Anne Stillman from Writer’s Digest Books is great on spelling and frequently misused words.
• The Least You Should Know About English Writing Skills, Form A by Teresa Ferster Glazier from Harcourt Brace Jovanovich College Publishers is out in many editions but Form A is my favorite.  This book has everything you needed to learn about English spelling and grammar but your teachers made too complicated to figure out.  It amounts to a slender volume, not that fat text and workbook you remember from your school days.
• “Avoid Common Grammar Pitfalls,” by Becky Ohlsen, in Writer’s Digest Magazine, August 2002 allows you to experience how a professional copy editor distills the process of editing for “tight, lean prose devoid of errors.”  Ohlsen supplies 22 tips phrased so that you can use them and remember them! Practically every library has this magazine in its archives.
• Some people I know have used Harvey Stanbrough’s Punctuation for Writers, which discusses how to use punctuation to achieve a particular effect in the reader and guide the reading of your work. His book offers writers a concise set of usage guidelines that will fit most writing scenarios, insight into the different uses of punctuation in prose, dialogue, and poetry, and instruction in how and why all readers must react to each punctuation mark.
• Although I don’t generally recommend a thesaurus because of the problems in tone created when a writer merely substitutes synonyms, this special online source is one that I enjoy:
• Plumb Design’s visual online thesaurus will have you realizing that unless you are repeating a word for emotional impact, there are many accessible words that are precise for your specific meaning and can keep you sounding informed and insightful.
• Thesaurus.com has a load of grammar tips is a link to a site is worth browsing from time to time to sharpen up your self-editing skills, and you may find some pearls of practical wisdom that inform you as you write and edit.
• McGraw – Hill’s WriteLinks includes links to dictionaries, thesauri, grammar guides, writing sites, language sites and more.
• Jack Lynch’s Guide to Grammar and Style is organized alphabetically and is very easy to use.