12. How to edit your writing effectively

In this episode, Michael and Jen are joined by our wonderful UniMelbSciComm colleague Dr Linden Ashcroft to discuss why editing is such an important skill. We all agree that allowing sufficient time to edit our writing is essential if we want to produce clear, concise and easy-to-read writing. Together we explore how we all learned to edit our writing and the different approaches we’ve learned along the way. We share our top tips and bond over the fact that effective editing can be a hard, but vital, skill to develop. In addition to our thoughts, hear fantastic advice from two of our UniMelbSciComm alumni, Ethan Wake and Connor McMahon.

Here are some good reads which may help your approach to editing:

Bird by Bird by Anne Lamott - this is where the idea of the down draft, up draft and dental draft comes from.

Destuffing your writing - a great list of words and phrases that you can wipe out of your writing to make your piece clearer and more specific

Twenty-five editing tips to improve your copy - see how many of these address aspects of your writing that you can improve!

Five editor's secrets to help you write like a pro - five simple fixes that will improve your writing

Improve your writing with these editing tips - excellent tips to improve the clarity of your writing

Editing and proofreading - advice from the University of North Carolina

Transcript: https://go.unimelb.edu.au/py8e