Edit your writing. You know this is a universal truth.
But actually, you want to say: Edit Shmedit. Am I right?
In the fast-paced world of social media where messages are written on the fly, creating posts is sandwiched in between designing Canva layouts and scheduling client appointments, and you have meeting after meeting with clients, who has the TIME to edit? I mean, isn’t it more important to get your message out than it is to hold it back until perfect?
Yes. And no.
I hear you. I’m in the trenches with you, too, balancing the many to-do’s on my calendar with the practicality of checking and correcting every typo, awkward sentence, lack of noun-verb agreement, and non-parallel sentence construction in my posts.
But here’s the deal: people may love your services despite the typos, love you, and buy from you anyway. But what if I told you that internet companies who track their revenue can see a doubling of sales from pages where typos were corrected?
Listen, no one is perfect—typos and missing punctuation and other grammatical ills creep into everyone’s writing, and sometimes remain even after professional proofreading, but if you are running a business, offline or online, or a novel or short story, you want your writing to be professional and readable. Don’t diminish your genius with copy that would flunk a grammar test. Or even copy and chapter text that has no overt typos, let’s say, but your sentence syntax is awkward at best, or you deviate from your topic part-way through. There are editors who edit for what is said and how well it’s said, too.
Suggestion: Write your content or chapter until you’re satisfied that it’s complete. Then close your doc file for at least a few hours. Come back and read it through. Your eyes will pick up mistakes that it didn’t earlier—typos, missing words, punctuation mistakes, and awkward or useless sentences and paragraphs. Do this a couple of times before presenting your work for publication–on your own blog or in a magazine or book.
Also, and don’t rely on this 100% for a variety of reasons, use spellcheck. At least your eht typo will be changed to the.
Yes, done is better than perfect, but well done trumps the impulsive action of writing quickly and posting it immediately on your blog or submitting your work for publication. Take a minute, or several, to edit.
Besides, a smoothly edited document is a joy to read, and you want your audience to be moved by your ideas and genius, not stopped by misspellings.
Do you have questions about editing? Let me know!