How marvellous it would be if you could edit your own writing...

...but there are not many people out there who are capable of doing so. Lisa Lepki of Ragan Communications understands that and she wants to help. So she has compiled a list of six common problems to fix "before your editor gets out the red pen":

1. Replace adverbs with strong verbs.

2. Fix repetitive use of initial pronouns.

3. Get rid of clichés.

4. Declutter your writing by cutting redundancies.

5. Eliminate your passive voice.

6. Get rid of sticky sentences.

Lepki elaborates on each point and also provides easy-to-grasp examples. Check out her post here: 6 self-editing tips to strengthen your writing.

Afterwards, download this free white paper, "10 ways to improve your writing today".

"Whether you're composing a press release, a blog post, a script, or executive talking points, these techniques," Ragan claims, "will enhance your communication." Get the white paper here.

• ALSO READ: What you need to know about amateur writing vs professional writing

Meet the 93-year-old journalist who still goes to work almost every day

For more than five decades now, Roger Angell has worked at the hallowed New Yorker magazine.

And during that time, as Sridhar Pappu points out in an elegantly written profile for Women's Wear Daily (also known as the bible of fashion), Angell has edited fiction and non-fiction while also publishing his own light-verse poems, short stories, profiles, and other features in the New Yorker's pages.

ROGER ANGELL WITH HIS FOX TERRIER, ANDY.

A few months ago, Angell made news on his own when he wrote a piece for the New Yorker that, as Pappu says in the profile, "managed to cut through the noise, becoming a subject of conversation at Manhattan cocktail parties and in Brooklyn bars while also generating thousands of tweets and more than 40,000 Facebook shares".

No wonder it created such a buzz. Look at that zinger of an opener:

Check me out. The top two knuckles of my left hand look as if I’d been worked over by the K.G.B. No, it’s more as if I’d been a catcher for the Hall of Fame pitcher Candy Cummings, the inventor of the curveball, who retired from the game in 1877. To put this another way, if I pointed that hand at you like a pistol and fired at your nose, the bullet would nail you in the left knee. Arthritis.

And here's another passage that speaks volumes for Angell's sense of humour:

Decline and disaster impend, but my thoughts don’t linger there. It shouldn’t surprise me if at this time next week I’m surrounded by family, gathered on short notice—they’re sad and shocked but also a little pissed off to be here—to help decide, after what’s happened, what’s to be done with me now. It must be this hovering knowledge, that two-ton safe swaying on a frayed rope just over my head, that makes everyone so glad to see me again. “How great you’re looking! Wow, tell me your secret!” they kindly cry when they happen upon me crossing the street or exiting a dinghy or departing an X-ray room, while the little balloon over their heads reads, “Holy shit—he’s still vertical!”

Read Angell's marvellous essay in its entirety here: "This Old Man".

And check out the profile written by Sridhar Pappu here: "Roger Angell: A Hall-of-Famer at 93".

• Two delectable nuggets from the profile:

*The writers Angell has edited include Woody Allen and John Updike.

*In 1956, [the editor of the New Yorker] gave Angell a staff position, only to ask him to take an editing test at the last minute. “I said, ‘No, I’m not going to take a test,’ ” Angell recalls. “I said, ‘I’ll start, and if it doesn’t work out, you can fire me.’ And it worked out.”

• Photograph courtesy: The New Yorker

• Back in June 2000, Sridhar Pappu had written an essay for Salon about his "experience with the new world of high-stakes Indian American dating". Read it here: "Deranged marriage".

ALSO READ: In the New Yorker — "Citizens Jain: Why India's newspaper industry is thriving"

• Patrick Michael, editor of the Dubai-based Khaleej Times, commented via Google+

What a zinger of an opening line! Reminds you of Charles Dickens (classics) and Raymond Chandler (non-fiction).

What is it about words that can stop you in your tracks no matter what you are doing? Opening lines was actually a topic for debate at the recent Emirates Literature Festival in Dubai and almost all the authors agreed that an opening lines makes all the difference between picking up or dropping a book. Perhaps you should invite your students to offer the best opening lines they have read... and the worst.

Here's mine:

"It was the best of times, it was the worst of times. It was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness; it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity; it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness; it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair. We had everything before us, we had nothing before us; we were all going direct to Heaven, we were all going direct the other way.” — Charles Dickens, A Tale of Two Cities
.
Beat that.

"If there’s any degree employers should value when hiring for a writing or editing job, it’s one in journalism, or mass communication"

Mark Nichol, editor of the Daily Writing Tips blog, has expressed surprise, in a recent post, over a job listing that "[perpetuates] the absurd notion that a degree in English — or literature, for God’s sake — is the ideal preparation for work as a writer or editor".

There can be some merit, Nichol writes, in having earned an English degree, but English majors do not necessarily master composition, much less the finer points of grammar, syntax, usage, punctuation, style, and the other components of writing, and revision of assigned papers is of little use in acquiring editing skills.

Nichol then asks an important question:

What academic preparation, then, should students — and employers — value?

Read Nichol's post in its entirety here to know the answer.

• ALSO READ: "Media education: From course structure to quality of students, the challenges are immense".

How did the Op-Ed Page get its name? What is its purpose? And how are the Op-Ed articles different from the editorials?

Trust the New York Times, one of the world's great newspapers, to have all the answers, and more.

We learn from a column in the paper written by Ed Shipley, who was then the Op-Ed Page editor, that the inaugural Op-Ed Page appeared on September 21, 1970, and that it was named for its geography — opposite the editorial page — not because opinions would be expressed in its columns.

A page of clashing opinions, however, was the aim from the beginning. According to an editorial introducing the page, Op-Ed was created to provide a forum for writers with ''no institutional connection with The Times'' — writers whose views would ''very frequently be completely divergent from our own.'' 

Media students and aspiring journalists will discover some fascinating stuff about the newspaper production process if they read Shipley's column here: "And Now a Word from Op-Ed".

ANGELA JOLIE'S OP-ED COLUMN FROM THE MAY 14, 2013, ISSUE.

There's more. Some 18 months after he published the essay discussed above, Shipley wrote one more column, this time answering readers' questions about the editing process. (The earlier column, as noted, focused on the submission and selection process.) This is just as fascinating to read as the previous piece. Read it here: "What We Talk About When We Talk About Editing".

• ALSO READ: How does the New York Times editorial board work? How are topics chosen for the editorials? What is the process by which the paper's editorial writers craft their editorials? Is it by committee? Do the reporters have any input? Who decides the final draft? Read the answer to all these questions in Editorial Page editor Andrew Rosenthal's Q&A column here (scroll down to "How the Editorial Board Works" on Page 5).

• ADDITIONAL READING: 

DNA does a U-turn and brings back the Edit Page

Why subs, or copy editors, are the lifeblood of a news organisation

What we can learn about editing from the Reader's Digest

The things that drive editors crazy

For some time now I have been visiting The Blood-Red Pencil, a blog that offers "sharp and pointed observations about good writing". The blog is run by 10 editors and writers whose goal, they say, is to help writers by blogging about what they know best: editing.

If you are a writer or an editor, or even a media student, you will find plenty of relevant and enlightening material here presented in an interesting way.

Take, for instance, a January 2010 post on the things that drive editors crazy. Author and freelance editor Maryann Miller gets straight to the point in her intro:

I’ve been editing for a long time and am still amazed at how often I see common mistakes repeated over and over again.

And then she gives us examples of the common mistakes:

Fred walked out, taking the file with him. You don’t need ‘with him’. If he took the file, it’s with him, DUH!! Or the sentence could be rewritten to make it a little more visual. Fred grabbed the file and walked out.

Those gray eyes of his stared right at her. This is an incredibly popular phraseology used in romance novels, and I wince every time I read it. As if he would be looking at her with anyone else’s eyes.

Sally shrugged her shoulders. What else would she shrug?

Harry nodded his head. As opposed to his elbow?

Sam found himself standing in the middle of… Was Sam lost? Much stronger to write: Sam stood in the middle of….

It was a picture of Madeline Smith, herself. Could it not just be a picture of Madeline Smith, period? Even my husband asked if the use of the reflexive pronoun was necessary, and he’s not an editor.

As I noted earlier, there's so much to learn here. Read the post in its entirety: "Things That Drive An Editor Crazy".

• The latest post, published today, on The Blood-Red Pencil is also, coincidentally, by Maryann Miller. Titled "Time Out for A Little Fun", the piece focuses on comic strips that, she says, feature jokes that connect loosely to writing and promoting. Read it here.

10 quotations from writers and editors on the importance of editing (or revision)

You may be a great writer, but you still need a good editor. That is what I believe as an editor with 30 years of experience. And that is the belief of the best writers and editors, too.

Here are 10 quotations from writers and editors that underscore the importance of editing (or revision).

[I'm greatly obliged to Dr Mardy Grothe for this list.]

Sit down, and put down everything that comes into your head
   and then you're a writer.
But an author is one who can judge his own stuff's worth,
   without pity, and destroy most of it.
         Colette

Cut out all those exclamation marks.
An exclamation mark is like laughing at your own joke.
         F. Scott Fitzgerald

My most important piece of advice to all you would-be writers:
     when you write, try to leave out all the parts readers skip.
         Elmore Leonard

 A writer is unfair to himself when he is unable to be hard on himself.
         Marianne Moore

Editing is the same as quarreling with writers — same thing exactly.
         Harold Ross

In composing, as a general rule, run a pen through every other word
     you have written; you have no idea what vigour it will give your style.
         Sydney Smith

It is with words as with sunbeams —
      the more they are condensed, the deeper they burn.
         Robert Southey

Omit needless words. Vigorous writing is concise.
 A sentence should contain no unnecessary words,
    a paragraph no unnecessary sentences,
    for the same reason that a drawing should have no unnecessary lines
    and a machine no unnecessary parts.
         William Strunk, Jr.

Writing is not like painting where you add.
It is not what you put on the canvas that the reader sees.
Writing is more like a sculpture where you remove,
    you eliminate in order to make the work visible.
Even those pages you remove somehow remain.
         Elie Wiesel

The very bitter lesson that everyone who wants to write
   has got to learn, was that a thing may in itself be
   the finest piece of writing one has ever done, and yet
   have absolutely no place in the manuscript one hopes to publish.
         Thomas Wolfe

My favourites? Fitzgerald's quote on the unnecessary use of exclamation marks and the one by Elmore Leonard which says so much (without saying as much) on why everything we write must be written keeping our audience in mind.

Also read:

• "Why subs, or copy editors, are the lifeblood of a news organisation"

• "What it means to be a newspaper sub"

• ADDITIONAL READING: "10 Things to Look Out for when Line Editing"

What we can learn about editing from the Reader's Digest

Last month I discovered a gem of a book in the Commits library: The Condensed World of the Reader's Digest, by Samuel A. Schreiner, Jr.

Not only does this book give us a fascinating insight into the world of the best-selling magazine and its creators DeWitt and Lila Wallace but it also helps us to understand the crucial role the fine art of editing played in the Digest's astonishing success of the last century.

Schreiner is able to give us an insider's viewpoint because he worked as an editor of the magazine for many years. This is not a muck-raking book, though — far from it. Instead Schreiner takes as objective a look at the Digest as is possible given his insider status. And he is at pains to explain his motives for writing this book, which was first published in 1977:

The fact that I was an insider does... raise some questions about the ethics of this enterprise. The first, of course, is whether I have a right to make public what I can about an organization which I served willingly, knowing its preference for secrecy.

It isn't an easy question to answer.

Before I undertook this project, the publisher made clear to me his intention of having a book about the Reader's Digest written by somebody. I agreed with him. While, in fact, the Reader's Digest is a private company, there is no company more actively seeking public approval. The magazine reaches into every fourth American home; a hundred million people around the world read it. My own feeling is that they have a right to know as much as possible about how the words they are asked to accept, and pay for, are brought into being.

Beyond that, the Digest has made itself into such a wonder of the world, like the Pyramids or the Great Wall of China, that it cannot forever escape paying the price of curiosity that such wonders provoke. As to my own authorship, I accepted the job on the grounds that being now a writer, I had a right if not a duty to tackle a subject for which I was peculiarly equipped.

In later chapters, all written in an engaging style and packed with interesting anecdotes, Schreiner elaborates on the techniques used by DeWitt Wallace and the Digest staff to ensure that the Reader's Digest was "without peer". Till as recently as the eighties at least, it stood "astride the world of publishing like Gulliver in Lilliput, and the sensation of riding the back of a gentle giant" eventually got to most people who worked there, writes Schreiner.

HOUSEHOLD NAMES: DeWitt and Lila Wallace.

The chapter that journalists and media students will find highly instructive — I know I did — is titled "Along Murderer's Row" (from a writer's perspective, perhaps, a very apt title; more on this below). Schreiner begins the chapter with a quote from Norman Cousins, editor of Saturday Review and "an astute observer of the American magazine scene":

The secret of the Reader's Digest is editing. I tell my audiences ... that the Reader's Digest is the best edited magazine in America. Wally [DeWitt Wallace] himself is the best pencil man, and the result of his technique is clarity — the words lift right off the page into your mind.

Then Schreiner gets down to brass tacks. Some excerpts:

[Each] Digest article receives the benefit of a total of twenty to thirty man hours of attention, divided among some five different editors; by contrast, I had cut a whole book for [my previous magazine] Parade on [a] fifty-five-minute train ride. When I took my guilt feelings over being allowed, even pressed, to use so much time on a single job to my straw boss at the Digest, he soothed me with these words: "Here we take time to polish the diamond.

***

An article scheduled for publication in the Digest, whether it is an original or a reprint from another publication, rises from the hands of a first cutter to a more experienced or skilled check cutter to an issue editor to a managing editor for the issue to the editor-in-chief and/or DeWitt Wallace. Each of these editors is charged with putting the article into what he personally feels is the best length and shape for final publication in the Digest. In the process, anything from whole pages to phrases to single words are taken out or restored, according to the preference of the last — and highest — editor working on the piece.

While, in general, the top two or three editors limit their blue pencilling to fairly subtle refinements, I once saw an article, whittled down by half a dozen editors from eight or ten large-sized magazine pages to four Digest pages, come back from the desk of DeWitt Wallace cut once more in half; he had simply dropped off the first two pages in which the author was indulging in some dazzling "writing" and started with the point the piece was trying to make. Since the offices in which these operations go forward tend to be lined up along one corridor for the sake of convenience, that part ... is understandably referred to, mostly by bleeding authors, as murderer's row.

Rather than a slaughter house the area seems more like a distillery to me, an operation in which the verbal water is boiled off over a series of editorial flames until there's nothing left but stuff of the highest proof.

What a lyrical description that last paragraph is of the editing process! In this age of shorter time-spans and a multitude of distractions, I can think of a few magazines (and many writers) that will benefit from a rigorous application of the Digest's editing and trimming-down techniques. (At the same time, I have to say there's something to be said for dazzling writing, the kind that is referred to as "long-form journalism", which we find in Indian magazines like The Caravan and in American publications like The New Yorker. Read an earlier post: Long-form journalism in The Caravan.)

Coming back to The Condensed World of the Reader's Digest, Schreiner admits it is difficult to describe just how to turn the rough stone of an original article or a reprint into a Digest gem. There are no manuals on the art of digesting, he writes. "Newcomers to the Digest staff are not even given verbal instructions or told, for example, what to take out of an article or how to reorder its sequence to make it move more swiftly and logically or what other things might be done to improve it. You learn by observing what seasoned editors do, by your own trial and error."

So true. Unless you're supremely talented (and very few of us are), you can only become a good journalist by learning on the job and making (but not repeating) your own mistakes, presuming you have first been taught the fundamentals at a good J-School.

Samuel Schreiner's book should be on the bookshelf of every aspiring journalist not simply because it is about a best-selling magazine but because the writing is top-notch and it offers so many insights into the practice of print journalism.