Editing: A Five-Step Process

Perhaps an even more important issue than how much editing you should do is how you should do it. Most people were never taught true editing skills. Instead, what they learned to do was proofread.

Proofreading is part of editing, the final step before you print and deliver the proposal, but it's not the whole job. In fact, there are four other steps that must precede proofreading.

Don't Edit Immediately After Writing.

You must let your writing "cool'' before you edit it. If you look at it immediately after finishing the first draft, you'll miss a lot of errors and problems. Apparently, this is a variation of the Gestalt principle of completion of form. Because you know what you meant to say, you are unable to see what you did say. You read what you think should be there, rather than what is actually on the page.

When you have gained sufficient detachment (or found somebody to do the editing for you), cover all five steps of the process, even if you do some of them simultaneously.

Step 1: Go through the first draft quickly and ask three questions:

1. Have I said anything obviously dumb?

   • Misplaced modifiers, incomplete thoughts, errors in logic, the wrong client's name—all of these qualify as dumb.

2. Have I written with a consistently client-centered focus?

   • Challenge yourself: Is this information necessary? Does it address the client's needs, problems, interests, values?

3. Can I cut any of this material without interfering with the reader's understanding or my ability to persuade?

   • Be ruthless. Many proposals are bogged down with a clutter of details.

You will probably find it helpful to read through the draft out loud. When you have to say the words, you hear them more accurately and the rough spots become more obvious. Read quickly. Don't stop at this point to fix things. Just mark whatever you notice.

Step 2: Read through the proposal more slowly now and focus on organization and structure. You're still not rewriting. You're trying to figure out if the content flows in the clearest and most persuasive way. Ask yourself:

1. Structure:

   • Have I used the persuasive paradigm to structure the proposal as a whole?

   • Is the overall proposal unified? Is there one central value proposition, idea, or focus to which everything is related?

2. Organization:

   • Have I used the P-A-R format to organize my case studies?

   • Did I use the three-part pattern for my important RFP answers?

   • Does the sequence of content in my resumes put the most important facts up front?

   • Are the various parts of the proposal arranged in a coherent, logical order? Do they match the order specified by the client, if any?

3. Is the information easy to find?

   • Did I create logically sequenced sentences, paragraphs, and sections?

   • Are the key ideas up front whenever possible?

   • Do the major sections start with an introduction?

   • Have I used plenty of highlighting?

Step 3: During the third step, work on clarity, conciseness, precision, directness, and emphasis. In particular, make sure you have adjusted your proposal to suit the audience, then take a close look at your word choice, sentence structure, and overall readability. The goal is to communicate the information so clearly that your customer can read it once and understand it.

1. Audience:

   • Did I slant the material toward the audience's

     • Level of expertise?

     • Personality type?

     • Role in the decision-making process?

   • Did I prioritize content so that what the audience thinks most important appears first?

2. Word choice:

   • Work on the words or phrases you marked during your initial review of the proposal.

   • Challenge jargon and acronyms. Are they necessary? Are they defined clearly?

   • Review the chapter on word traps in this book. Correct any of these mistakes.

3. Sentence lengths and patterns

   • Check for passive voice. Revise passive constructions into active voice.

   • Check the verbs. For sentences where the main verb is a form of "to be,'' rewrite the sentence so that it contains a strong verb.

   • Use the grammar checker in your word processing software to determine your proposal's average sentence length. Is it near the fifteen- to seventeen-word range that's most accessible for adult readers?

   • Have you minimized compound/complex constructions?

   • Have you avoided long dependent clauses, particularly at the beginning of the sentence?

4. Readability

   • If your word processor contains a readability tool, use it. Is the readability of your proposal appropriate?

   • Spot check the most important parts of your proposal—the cover letter, the executive summary, the section intros.

5. Make information easy to understand

   • Focus on simplicity: in vocabulary, sentence structure, and organization.

   • Keep the proposal as brief as possible.

   • Be specific: Use details, not clich s, to make your points; use graphics to illustrate concepts; include examples, comparisons, and analogies to make your ideas clear.

   • Keep the proposal relevant—no tangents, nothing extraneous or unnecessary.

Step 4: During the fourth phase of editing, work on style. In particular, look for generic, bland descriptions of your products or services that you can make vivid by linking them to the customer's business, specific needs, or desired outcomes. Also, watch for the typical business clich s. Is there a way to make your point more emphatically by using specific details? What about a metaphor or analogy, particularly for a level one reader? You might even look for an opportunity to use humor or a bit of drama.

Step 5: At the fifth level of revision, a writer looks for mechanical or typographical errors, the mistakes of carelessness or neglect. Errors in spelling, punctuation, grammar, and other small mistakes can communicate to a reader that you are careless, hasty, ignorant, or disrespectful. Besides—such mechanical and grammatical mistakes are nothing but background noise, which can interfere with your message getting through.