# How to edit written content

Always edit for simplicity.

We [understand](understanding.md) things proportional to how few words we need to say them:

- Aim for brief, simple sentences.
  - Strong, long sentences are simply many short sentences strung together.
  - Use commas sparingly, and split up sentences frequently.
- Write like you talk.
  - If your writing is particularly awful, try to explain what you wrote to a friend, then throw out what you wrote and write what you said to them.
  - Some [academic circles](understanding.md) find it offensive, but simple writing with a clear point demonstrates expertise.

Edit to simplify, not add:

- Good writing is removing useless information much more than adding.
  - We add more information because we fear being misunderstood, which ironically makes our writing unclear.
  - The reader should always feel like you know more content than what you're writing.
- Your clarity will convince, *not* your [logic](logic.md).
  - Your clear expression demonstrates [truth](reality.md), and people can see the truth for themselves without persuasion.
- Cross out *every* sentence you don't need, and merge sentences together whenever possible.
  - Good sentences often hide inside bad ones, so trust your instincts and rewrite as needed.

If you think others might misread you, they will:

- The longer and more sentences, the more readers misunderstand.
- If you can and the style permits it, write only one sentence per line.
- Only use words you know the *exact* meaning of.

Good writing sounds excellent when read out loud:

- Read out loud as you write, then remove awkward language you'd never actually say.
- Unless you're trying to be vague or artistic, poetic styling is inappropriate.
- To avoid giving a monotone feel, never write with the same number of words from sentence to sentence.
- Formalized language gives extra work for the reader, so use easy-to-understand words.
- Harder subjects generally call for simple words.
- Which of the two is better to read?
  1. Let your conversational communications possess a clarified conciseness, a compacted comprehensibleness, coalescent consistency, and a concatenated cogency. Eschew all conglomerations of flatulent garrulity, jejune babblement, and asinine affectations. Let your extemporaneous descantings and unpremeditated expatiations have intelligibility and veracious vivacity, without rodomontade or thrasonical bombast. Sedulously avoid all polysyllabic profundity, pompous prolixity, setaceous vacuity, ventriloquial verbosity, and vaniloquent vapidity. Shun double-entendres, prurient jocosity and pestiferous profanity, obscurant or apparent.
  2. Talk plainly, briefly, naturally, sensibly, truthfully and purely. Keep from slang, don't put on airs, say what you mean, mean what you say, and don't use big words.
- Catch errors by converting the text to speech:
  - Copy the text into a text-to-speech system to see how it sounds.
  - Read your work aloud to nearby family members.

Write unapologetically: if you feel you must concede something or use a quote for an expression, don't use it.

Constantly edit and re-edit:

- Most of the writing process is editing, not drafting.
- Since everyone uses a [computer](computers.md), typographical and simple grammatical errors in any published work are rarely acceptable.

If you *must* pad out printed pages:

- Increase the font size or character/paragraph spacing.
- State obvious observations and clarify easy-to-understand concepts to broaden the word count and elaborate the ideas.
- The quality of the writing *will* suffer, so only do it if you don't care.
- If you *do* care, consider changing your novel to a novella or your book to an essay.

## Avoid an amateur writing style

If you're writing publicly, focus on facts more than experiences or feelings.

Show the audience; don't tell or give an editorial.

Change the length of your sentences to stay interesting, even if you're writing [technical documentation](language-writing-documentation.md).

Avoid fanciful or empty statements:

- A simple idea requires few words.
- Every sentence and word should either advance the action or add relevant information.
- Never use common metaphors, similes, or figures of speech.
- Replace long trade-specific, scientific, slang and foreign words with simple ones.
- Cut out excessive adverbs and details that don't add to the central ideas.

Frequently shift focus by varying sentence structure, type, style, and jumping around inside the story.

Don't clutter your tone:

- You're trying to float the reader through the ideas you're presenting, *not* fully inform or convince them.
  - [Influencing](power-influence.md) them requires that they conclude it themselves, so you'll either appear desperate or wordy.
- Adjectives (e.g., "gentle") and adverbs (e.g., "gently") often add useless detail, so drop them whenever you feel your writing is bogged-down.
- Match your pronouns across the body of the entire work.
- Use figures of speech that match the style you're aiming for.

If you use cliché terms, you're simply borrowing someone else's phrases, and it's not your authentic voice.

Keep your punctuation interesting, but accurate:

- Surprise people with varied transitions like colons, dashes, and block quotations.
- Use commas to clearly separate the pacing of a sentence, but don't cram two sentences together.
- Use apostrophes to indicate ownership, but avoid using them for plural nouns.

Even while writing, maintain a flow:

- Use 2-syllable words whenever you can, and offset 3-syllable words afterward with 1-syllable words.
- Your ideal goal is iambic pentameter, which is 5 sets of 2-syllable words.

Use the active voice:

- The passive voice rearranges nouns to avoid a proper noun, but dilutes words' impact.
  - Passive voice comes across as (EffectNoun) was (Verbed) by (CauseNoun).
    - Many iterations of the word "it" capture the passive voice (e.g., "it was nice...").
    - For plural nouns, use "they" or "all" instead of "everybody" (e.g., "everybody was...").
  - The active voice is framed as (CauseNoun)(Verbed)(EffectNoun).
    - Active voice gives power from its clarity and simplicity: "John ate cake." versus "The cake was eaten by John".
- Writers usually speak in the passive voice from poor understanding or to avoid offending, but it frequently creates confusion.
- To find the passive voice, watch for any awkward pronouns or many small words in the sentence.

Don't misuse words:

- "Less" describes intangible concepts, "fewer" describes numbers.
- "Then" refers to time, "than" shows an alternative.
- "Impact" is a noun, "affect" is to change, "effect" is a consequence.
- "It's" is the contraction of "it is", "its" is the possessive of "it".
- "Alot" is not a word, "a lot" is a large amount, "allot" is to give something.
- "Whom" is only used when the statement can refer to "him".
- "Into" refers to inside, "in to" has no connection to a location.
- When using "...and me" or "...and I", pick the one that makes sense without the other one in it (e.g., "John and [I went to the store]").
- Only use a trade-related word if you fully *know* what that word means.

Don't overuse the same words:

- Emphasizing a point with "really" or "very".
- Using "you" when not referring to the reader.
- Saying "feel" instead of the word that describes the feeling.
- Saying "think" to indicate an opinion (the reader knows it's an opinion).
- "As", "just", "a lot", and "used to" in most contexts.
- "Sort of" and "kind of".
- "Like" to show an analogy.
  - Using a verb sounds far more fluid than analogies.

Avoid "filler" words:

- Examine every word, since many are surprisingly useless:
  - many, make an appearance with, appear with, is capable of being, can be, is dedicated to, providing, provides, in the event that, if it is imperative that we, we must, brought about, the organization of, organized, significantly expedite the process of, speed up, on a daily basis, daily, for the purpose of, to, in the matter of, about, in view of, the fact that, since, owing to the fact that, because, relating to the subject of, regarding with...
- Don't use vague language, even if you're afraid of what people may think:
  1. The reader will misunderstand you, and will probably be offended through their misunderstood idea.
  2. The reader will decipher what you're getting at, and then be offended you didn't state it in simpler terms.
  3. You'll bore the reader, and they'll do something more interesting than your writing.

To magnify the dramatic effect of your language, use a florid or uncommon word in the midst of simpler and smaller words.

Use parallel syntax in each sentence to express patterns:

- e.g., "He reads, eating, and cleaning" versus "He's reading, eating, and cleaning".
- e.g., "They went to the park: it was fun. They went to the factory: it wasn't."
- e.g., "Stop existing, start living."

Use concrete imagery more than abstract:

- Generally, vague speaking (such as with [philosophy](philosophy.md)) will tire out the reader because they must hunt to connect that idea to something practical.
  - Even intelligent readers who enjoy philosophy are simply using it as a prompt for their [imagination](mind-imagination.md).
- By speaking in plain terms and with clear connections, you do most of the work for the reader and motivate them to keep reading through to the end.
- If you're not sure if you're being clear enough, liberally use metaphor and simile to bring make ideas tangible.

Great writers think in paragraphs, not sentences:

- Focus on clearly communicating ideas more than sentence size, paragraph length, or page count.
  - Size doesn't matter: one-sentence ideas have brought down entire [institutions](mgmt-badsystems.md).
- From paragraph to paragraph, your tone is *far* more important than size.
  - Some sentences don't need many words, while others are highly elaborate.
  - A paragraph is simply a pause for the reader to understand the idea before continuing, and may only need one sentence.
    - However, most ideas are small enough that paragraphs should rarely travel past about 5 full sentences.
- The last sentence should end with an entertaining or surprising idea that points to the first sentence of the next paragraph.
  - If you can make the reader smile, they'll read one more paragraph.
- Each new paragraph should amplify the ideas from the last.
  - Don't be afraid to use transitioning words at the beginning: But, Yet, However, Nevertheless, Still, Instead, And, Therefore, Thus.
- If your paragraphs start expanding across too large a set of ideas, break them into multiple paragraphs or remove transitioning sentences.
  - When you start adding a digression or side detail to a paragraph, make a new paragraph.
  - If you're expanding on a seemingly unrelated concept, explicitly explain why you're going there.
- If your idea seems complete, but you have another one that follows, break into another chapter or topic.