Mike Hannay en J. Lachlan Mackenzie - Effective Writing in English

2 Editing

2.1

Introduction

Every piece of writing, even the simplest e-mail, needs to be checked before being presented to its ultimate reader. This is particularly true of argued texts, which are held to the highest standards and must therefore be exam ined thoroughly for imperfections prior to being submitted. This process is known as editing, which is just as important an activity as the stages of plan ning and writing proper. Editing is probably the most complex of all writing skills, since it involves adopting a kind of double personality: you are not only the writer of your text but also a reader. And not just any reader. You need to become the most critical, nitpicking reader your text could ever encounter. What you are doing is trying to anticipate every difficulty a reader could con ceivably have with what you have written. As we all know from personal experience, perfect communication between two human beings is achieved only very rarely. The fact that there is physical and temporal distance between writers and their readers (cf. Chap ter 1 Section 3) makes it all the harder to communicate intentions unambig uously in writing. Your only hope is to formulate your ideas so accurately and transparently that the anticipated readership is likely to understand your text in the way you wish. Communication theorists have pointed out that this involves satisfying four requirements (known as Grice’s maxims), which boil down to the following recommendations: 1 Offer your reader no more and no less information than they need. 2 Give your reader an honest and well-argued account of your beliefs. 3 Stick to the point, without digressing into side issues. 4 Choose language that is straightforward. Under special circumstances you may deviate a little from these precepts, but bear in mind that you will be asking your reader to do the additional work of figuring out why you are doing so. Perhaps your intention is to be ironic, tongue-in-cheek, or amusing; but these are tricks that are very hard to pull off in a foreign language.

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