A practical guide to editing your own text or text written by others

Making your text 'flow'

When editing, you will need to check that the text flows from section to section, that there are no
jumps in the logic, and that the document 'hangs' together. You also need to make sure that the
language flows from word to word, sentence to sentence, and paragraph to paragraph.
Try using the following words and phrases to help you 'flow'.

Signposting the route

To start with ...

There are three issues/points/problems ...
In this section ...
I will describe ... in three stages. Firstly ...

Moving on

Following this ...

The next step ...
This also suggests ...
Another possibility/factor/example ...

Reinforcing

Furthermore ...
As I pointed out in ...
Looking again at ...
In addition ...

Changing direction

On the other hand ...

Meanwhile ...
However ...
In contrast ...

Introducing questions or doubt

Alternatively ..
Although ...
In spite of this ...
Even so ...

Concluding

Two questions remain ...

Finally, ...
If we now summarize the ...
In conclusion ...

Making the tone less formal

When you edit the style of a piece of text, you choose from a number of different ways of
expressing the same thing. The decision you make will depend on your audience and your
purpose.
Making the tone less formal can be tricky if you wrote the text yourself, but there are a number
of tricks you can try.
Use 'you' or 'your'
Use 'I' and 'We'
Avoid using 'I' too often
Avoid replacing 'I' with myself
Use contractions
Use everyday vocabulary
Working with figures
Presenting figures is an important part of the work of editors and writer-editors. The task is hard
because some practices are so common that they are almost rules; in other areas you have to
decide what to do, such as whether to use per cent or %.
This checklist is based on advice given to financial journalists.
Spell out numbers one to nine; then use 10, 11, 12.
Follow the same rules for ordinals: second and 14th.
BUT
Use figures if you are dealing with measurements (1 mile, 7 per cent), ranges of numbers (9-12
months), or fractions and decimals (21/2, 2.5 months).
Expressing fractions and ranges of numbers:
Write out fractions: two-thirds, one-tenth.
Most people prefer per cent to %
Write 5m-10m (not 5-10m)
Write 10,000 - 12,000 (not 10-12,000)
Express ratios as nine to seven, 17 to 24, or 17:24
Express periods as 1949 to 1963 or during 1949-63.
Newspaper research shows people prefer:
Millions expressed as 10m, 7.2m.
Abbreviations: 1.5 million (not 1,500,000)
500,000, rather than half a million