From the friendly caves of Pixie Hollow.
Today's Monday, so here's a checklist to help your approvers edit your content:
- Remind yourself that you had a professional write it, and assume that they've done their job correctly.
- Remind yourself that writing (or RE-writing) is not your job.
- Pull out the tone-and-voice guide and keep it handy as a reference.
- Pull out your house style guide, and keep it handy as a reference.
- Pull out your organisation's official dictionary and keep it handy as a reference.
- Pull out your organisation's official usage guide and keep it handy as a reference.
- Read it through once looking only for elements that don't flow properly: Make some notes about this to pass back to the writer. If there are structural problems, give it back to the writer before doing anything else, otherwise you'll waste your time.
- If there are no structural issues, keep moving:
- Read it once through looking only for factual errors and inaccuracies.
- Read it through once looking only for spelling errors according to your house style and official dictionary. If you're even slightly unsure, look it up!
- Read it through again, looking only for usage errors. If you're even slightly unsure, look it up!
- Read it once through again looking only for house style (word endings, number treatment, acronym handling, etc.)
- Check that all references are in the correct order, if relevant.
- Check that all links work, if relevant.
- Check permissions on all images (or that they are genuinely copyright-free, if permissions/ownership is not relevant)
- (Web content only). Read it again looking for appropriate HTML markup, making sure that all the headings follow each other and that the content is properly and accurately tagged, linked, and categorised.
There are a bunch of other elements that you require. For example, checking that the content is unique and not plagiarised. But that's a job for the writer and not you, so you might want to add that to your workflow sign-off. This way your writer is responsible for these types of administrivial duties.
You'll notice that this checklist is likely nothing like what your approvers currently do.
Probably they sit there with a red pen (or, worse, red tracked-changes) and fundamentally edit or rewrite what they've got. They're not approvers, they're interveners.
If you give them this checklist and they're still doing the intervention song-and-dance, then it might be time to consider bringing in a third-party.
Editorial oversight and approval is a process. It's a largely hands-off process, and apart from subject-matter accuracy, doesn't require a subject-matter expert.
What it requires is focus, patience, expertise and restraint.
So if that's something that you need, reply and tell me and I'll gift you a free assessment of your editorial approval process.
xx Leticia "editing professionally since the turn of the century" Mooney
Please let me know what I can do for you.
Leticia Mooney is a consultant with decades of experience writing with and for people like you. Her company Brutal Pixie casts the the kind of spells your customers love. It consults to businesses in content strategy, content writing, ghostwriting, content operations, communication strategy, audits, investigations, training and coaching. Leticia is also the mother of an intelligent, engaging, and curious boy, who is named after a character created by J.R.R Tolkien. You can learn more about
her at
https://biodagar.com/about, and her business at
https://brutalpixie.com.
Leticia Mooney
PO Box 1190
Pasadena SA 5042
Australia
Phone/Text (Signal/Telegram) +61 421 925 382
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