Forget the Fifth of November, Just Remember to SLOW DOWN when You Edit

Letting someone else look at your work is kinda scary.

But gather around and let your teacher tell a true story about how having others evaluate your work can be a benefit to you.

This was me, a few weeks ago. Invisible to management until a mistake was noticed in my work.

Why was the mistake there? Two reasons:

1. I assumed the people I was working with had scrubbed this particular document for errors like this.

2. I did not scrub this particular document myself to detect errors like this.

I'm being vague because I can't discuss the nature of the work, but suffice it to say: Mistakes were made. I did not detect them -- and detecting is part of my job -- and the errors were detected by someone higher up in the chain.

I have since re-evaluated my work process with these particular documents and implemented a stragegy to help me detect these errors before the higher-ups have a chance to spot them. It means more work, but it also means infinitely less work and increased trust further in the document review process.

I neglected to check someone else's work properly, and it cost me a weekend of anxiety and two long weeks of work following that to make things right.

So, the lesson here is twofold:

1. When you peer review someone else's work, be sincere in your efforts.

2. When you get feedback, be sincere in accepting that your writing isn't perfect.

Here's a quick lesson on what's called "Levels of Edit," something I'd forgotten as I worked (or didn't work) on the document in question.

Levels of Edit means you read a document more than once -- each time focusing on a particular attribute of writing. That does mean more work on the surface, but it also means your likelihood of catching errors goes up significantly as you go through the various levels.

Here are some typical Levels of Edit to consider:

Spelling/grammar. Just looking to see if there are typos, misused words, awkward sentences and such.

Flow. Are the transitions between ideas okay? Does what your reading make sense, or are there gaps that the writer needs to fill to help you understand better?

Citations/APA. Does the author tell us where each quote or paraphrasing comes from? Are references included, as well as the works cited page?

As usual, Purdue OWL has some pretty helpful suggestions on the levels of edit to consider.

But wait -- won't I save time if I do all this editing at the same time?

Maybe.

Or maybe you'll miss important stuff if you don't take a more methodical approach.

I have more than 25 years of professional writing experience, and yet I still screwed up on something pretty fundamental because I was trying to do all levels of editing at the same time.

My advice to myself now: Slow down. Remember the fundamentals. And avoid future, high-profile screw ups. They're not pretty.

And if Dilbert isn't enough, consider the wisdom of John Kenneth Galbraith, economist and diplomat: