Editing Principle 02: Respect Your Audience’s Time

It is sadly true that you can never assume readers will read to the end. Few professional writers make that assumption (perhaps that makes them pros). Many writers actually feel compelled to win your attention anew with each sentence. For them, every sentence has to seduce.

How to decrease the odds of your audience quitting on you? Here are three ideas:

Short sentences. Examine each word and ask: “Does this need to be here? Will the sentence make sense without it?” If a word is inessential, cut it.

Eliminate repetition. Repeating words prompts readers to tune out. So using “innovative,” say, four times in a paragraph drains rather than adds meaning. Repeated adjectives are the biggest drainers of rhetorical punch, repeated nouns next. Repeated verbs are less of a problem, if only because they’re less common.

Check your use of -ings.

Seeing clearly what can safely go and what must stay takes practice. The more you do it, however, the quicker you’ll be able to cut out fat, and trust that nothing’s lost.

Our tenth-grade English teacher insisted: Revise paragraphs until you think them perfect. Then cut by half. Revise again.

This was good advice.

One more anecdote: When I was working as an editorial assistant, I had explicit instructions that book jacket copy was not to exceed 200 words. I once filed copy 207 words long. (Who knows why.) I then received a blistering phone call from a managing editor who wanted to know, in essence, what my problem was. I mention this only to suggest that if you think more words are more convincing, you may want to reconsider.

Strunk and White put it more sweetly in The Elements of Style: “Make every word tell.”