The HowTo of HowTos: Writing Procedures like a Pro

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The How-To of How-Tos Writing Procedures
like a Pro

• Rebecca Edgerton
• Woolpert, Inc.

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Introduction

• Rebecca Edgerton, Woolpert, Inc.
• Nearly 30 years
• Editor, writer, supervisor, manager, novelist,
  nag
• Lots of awards
• Yadda, yadda, yadda

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What well talk about

• The importance of writing and editing
• Two kinds of issues
• Grammatical
• Stylistic
• Assume spelling, grammar, punctuation skills
• Focus on pervasive problems

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Editing defined

• Carolyn Rude

Editing the text means making it complete,
accurate, comprehensible, and usable as well as
correct. (Technical Editing, p. 12)

• Rebecca

Editing is reducing bulkwhile increasing
usability.
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Objectives

• Chopping and simplifying
• Finding the right place
• Using strong words
• Using appropriate words
• Checking for sense

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Plan

• Discussion
• Guidelines
• Examples
• Activities
• In pairs
• Alone
• Questions throughout

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Levels of edit

• Emergency edit
• Cursory edit (proofreading)
• Limited edit (copy editing)
• Thorough edit (substantive edit)

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Editing venues

• Paper
• Comfy but clumsy
• Possibly easier to see details?
• Screen
• Porthole, possible eyestrain
• Lots of editing and versioning tools

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Activity Passages gone wrong
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Part 1 Trimming

• Unnecessary words
• Tautologies
• Clichés
• Passive to active
• Long sentences
• Confusion

Tautologyneedless repetition
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Eliminate fluff

• Clichés
• Double negatives
• Redundancy
• Gilded lilies
• Bloat

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Avoid clichés like the plague

• Todays worst offenders
• Soup-to-nuts solution
• Low-hanging fruit
• Bleeding edge
• Thinking outside the box
• Too much on my plate

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Dont use no double negatives

• Obvious
• Dont nobody move.
• There isnt no point.
• Subtle, confusing
• He is never unwilling to help.
• Its not unusual.
• She is not unavailable.

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Reduce redundancies and repetition

• Repetition ? emphasis
• Todays worst offenders
• advance planning (even preplanning)
• end result
• root cause
• close proximity
• whether or not
• Appendix A

More!
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Dont gild the lily
More!

• Modifiers on modifiers
• Absolutelyabsolutely unique
• Completelycompletely finished
• Reallyreally exceptional

Substitute damn every time youre inclined to
write very your editor will delete it and the
writing will be just as it should be.Mark Twain
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Cure vocabulary bloat

• Bigger words ? more impressive
• Bigger words confusion
• Danger signs
• -age, -ate, -ation, -ize, -ology, -ous
• Todays worst offenders
• utilize ? use
• optimum ? best
• facilitate ? ease, help
• are desirous ? want, choose
• More in Appendix A

More!
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Vocabularious bloatus

• The disease

Numerous instantiations of terminology that move
stealthily into prose can be supplanted by more
unpretentiousand frequently more succinct
verbiage that imparts significance with augmented
alacrity. (26 words/59 syllables, Flesch Reading
Ease 0, Flesch-Kinkaid Grade Level 12.0)

• The cure

Many words that creep into writing can be
replaced by simpler, often shorter words that
communicate better. (17 words/28 syllables,
Flesch Reading Ease 5.2, Flesch-Kinkaid Grade
Level 10.4)
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Watch for spoken pollution in text

• Homonyms
• Where theres a will
• The human bondage of of
• Thats all, folks
• To be or not to be

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Homonym horror

• led-lead
• do-due
• to-too-two
• your-youre
• there-theyre-their
• its-its

Homonymswords with the same sound but different
meanings
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Where theres a will

• Unnecessary will If you press the red button,
  the rocket will take off.
• Better If you press the red button, the rocket
  takes off.
• Even better To launch the rocket, press the red
  button.
• Or Press the red button to launch the rocket.

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Of human bondage

• Unnecessary of all of the
• Better all the
• Prepositional phrase method of collection
• Better collection method
• Incorrect of He should of known
• Correct He should have known

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Thats all, folks!

• Unnecessary that Open the door so that you can
  go outside.
• Better Open the door so you can go outside.
• Even better Open the door to go outside.
• Even better To go outside, open the door.

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To be or not to be

• Unnecessary to A good manual helps the reader
  to understand.
• Better A good manual helps the reader understand.

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Activity Slicing and dicing
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Shorten sentences

• Dig before you cut
• Use the right tools
• Deflate prepositional phrases

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Dig before you cut

• Too many independent clausesmultiple main ideas
• Too many dependent clausesmultiple supporting
  ideas
• Too many phrasesprepositional swamp
• Too many modifiersgilding the lily

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Use the right tools

• Multiple ideas or independent clauses ? separate
  sentences
• No point ? no sentence
• Modifying phrases ? adjectives or adverbs
• Conditional statements ? separate sentences
• Chaos ? logical order, lists, parallelism

More!
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Deflate prepositional phrases

• The disease

There is a need in the entirety of the company
for an increased number of analysts in the area
of new system design. (23 words)

• The cure
• Preposition list

The whole company needs more analysts for system
design. (9 words)
More!
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Activity Trimming the fat
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Part 2 Toning

• Strengthening
• Hot spots
• Landmine words
• Inflammatory words

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Watch for sneaky nouns that change into verbs

• Lets back-burner this one for now.
• Have it couriered to Denver.
• He QC-ed the application.
• Beverage the guests before dinner.
• Dont Christmasize until December 1.

More!
Fax and email as verbs are here to stay, but
lets not verbize cellCell me when youre
ready to go.
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Watch for weak verbs
More!

• Vague, overused
• To be
• To do
• To have
• To get
• Wishy-washy
• To feel (to think, to believestronger)

The technician got it out with . . . ? pulled it
out ? extracted it ? unlocked it ? unscrewed it
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A recent horrorthe nonverb (with the nonsubject)
Please excuse the oversight. My bad.
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Find the hidden action

• Trapped inside a nounnominalization
• Associated with a weak verb
• do an implementation ? implement
• have an effect ? affect
• is in existence ? is, exists

More!
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Find the hidden action

• The disease

We did a comparison of the two answering
machines. (9 words)
Noun hiding action

• The cure

We compared the two answering machines. (6 words)
Strong verb
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Find the hidden action (if there is one)

• Nominalization danger signs
• -al, -ance, -ation, -ence, -ion, -ment
• Stacks of nominalizations ? nonsense
• Realization of this recommendation will ensure
  the facilitation of the utilization of the
  implementation of the installation of the . . .

Aargh!
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Stay active

• Dont pass on all passives
• Push passive to active

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Dont pass on all passives

• Useful when . . .
• The doer is unknown or unimportant
• The receiver is the focus
• Its important to avoid blame

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Push passive to active

• Changing a passive verb to active
• Put the subject back
• Turn an infinitive into a main verb
• Convert a noun into an active verb
• Reverse the subject and object

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Activity Keeping sentences active
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Pack a punch

• Natural hot spotschapters, letters, paragraphs,
  sentences
• Beginning
• Ending
• Important pointbeginning or ending
• Material to downplaymiddle

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Control the volume

• Emphasize red text, mute light blue text
• Were laying off several people because of the
  recession.
• Because of the recession, were laying off
  several people.

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Disarm landmine words

• Gender
• Abilities or disabilities
• Race, nationality, culture, age, or religion

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Disarm landmine words

• American ? its a whole continent!
• Dear Sir ? To Whom It May Concern (or no
  greeting)
• the blind ? people who are blind
• manhours ? hours, work hours
• the elderly ? senior citizens
• Indian ? Native American or person from India?

More!
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Extinguish inflammatory language

• Overly negative or judgmental
• Or exactly appropriate
• fatal
• bad
• hopeless
• useless
• waste
• afraid
• negligent

More!
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Activity Wheres the beef?
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Activity Putting it all together

• The lonnnng, boring (ho-hum), nasty memo

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Part 3 Tweaking

• Use the translation test
• Words are like stepping stones
• A misstep dumps you in the creek

Approach every document you edit as if it must be
translated to another language.
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Use the translation test
More!

• For each word
• Is it what I expected?
• What does it mean?
• Does it tell me whats coming next? (And does
  that come next?)
• How does it relate to earlier text?
• Is it necessary?
• Does it influence my opinion?
• Does it make sense?

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Translation traps

• Modifier/noun strings, distributed modifiers
• Ambiguous antecedents
• Misplaced modifiers
• Elliptical (telegraphic) English

More!
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More translation traps

• Invisible plurals
• Words with multiple or unclear meanings
• Meaningless phrases and nominalizations
• Punctuation pitfalls

More!
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Activity Using the translation test
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Checklist The 10 steps to editing stardom

• 1. Describe audience and expectations
• 2. Keep paragraphs tight
• 3. Keep sentences short and focused
• 4. Use the right voice
• 5. Stay parallel

More!
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Checklist The 10 steps to editing stardom

• 6. Avoid weak verbs and nominalizations
• 7. Keep modifiers connected
• 8. Cut the fat
• 9. Get it right
• 10. Reread with the audience in mind

More!
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Part 4 And squeaking (by)

• No time
• Squeaking byrat race editing
• Two-thirds for editing, one-third for fixing

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Checklist 12-step program for editing on the run

• 1. Use software tools
• 2. Check pagination
• 3. Check cover and title page
• 4. Look for glaring errors
• 5. Check format
• 6. Check TOC

More!
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Checklist 12-step program for editing on the run

• 7. Scan chapter numbers and other lists
• 8. Check tables, figures
• 9. Check what reader will look at first
• 10. Read page breaks
• 11. Check large type
• 12. Check the firsts

More!
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Bonus materialAppendix A
More!

• Eliminate the extra words
• ATM machine past experience
• free gift small in size
• Watch for redundancy with these words
• absolutely, totally, quite
• Replace the wordy phrases
• a majority of ? most
• prior to ? before
• has the capacity to ? can

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Bonus materialAppendix A

• Replace the bloat words
• utilize ? use
• subsequently ? later
• myself ? I or me
• Replace the possible landmine words
• ass ? ask
• snot ? -s not (is/has not)
• manger ? manager
• pubic ? public

More!
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More information

• Wielding Your Blue Pencil
• Rabble-Rousing Ramblings
• Questions, comments, or requests for full 50-page
  handout
• rebecca.edgerton_at_woolpert.com

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Now you can be an editing star!
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