Editing your own writing was the topic of an article written by Harry Guinness, published in The New York Times on 7 April 2020 and available for reading at this link.
I would like to take several of the headings of that article and provide some of my own reflections below.
Developing questions
Write the content first
Write your concerns
Reading outloud
Avoiding jargon
Latin
Abbreviations
(Parenthetical comments)
Clichés
The passive voice
Rambling
Outline
Spelling and grammar checker
Let the source texts lead you
Developing questions
One task of doctoral research is to develop questions. They will guide your research and help you tell the story. Learning how to be receptive to questions is an important step forward in such research. Once you come to doctoral research you are no longer presenting merely the work of others. Rather you are becoming the master of this material and it is up to you to follow your intuitions, questions, inspirations. With practice you will come to breakthroughs.
Write the content first, then the intro and conclusion
I write the most important point first, write the content first. Only after the content is clearly presented, then you can write teh conclusion. Finally, you can write an introduction that leads the reader into the content you have to say. This process works for a thesis as a whole, for an individual chapter and even for an individual paragraph. Content first, then conclusion and finally the introduction.
Understand that what you write first is a draft
Write your concerns
The first text I write often presents what is on my mind. I find that getting my thoughts down on paper helps me to express them and then let them go so that I can clear my mind for further considerations. That first text I write may express my reaction or even opposition to something I read or discussed with another person. As such it is often not appropriate for publishing, but writing my response in all honesty is helpful in establishing my beginning point for further considerations.
Reading outloud
Eventually my article begins to form a narrative of my own. At this point I begin to read my text outloud. I listen carefully to my reading so that if my lips say something different than what I have written, I reconsider how I might revise the written text to be closer to the way my mind reads it and my mouth pronounces it. At some point I am able to read the text fluidly, which indicates that the text itself flows naturally.
On the other hand, liturgical scholars should strive for a formal register of the language, rather than colloquial speech.
Watch for common errors
The author Harry Guinness names several common errors to consider.
Overuse of jargon and business speak.
Avoiding jargon
It is easy to hide behind jargon, especially when I have not understood well the material at hand or I have not clarified in my own mind what I want to say. One sign of being a master of a certain material is the ability to speak in ordinary language, to address the informed, non-specialist reader. For this reason when my colleague James Leachman and I speak of the four interpretative keys, we use the technical term, its ordinary English rendering as well as our rendering into common language.
- Anamnesis – memorial = active,
- Epiclesis – invocation = here,
- Eschatology = the filling full, full-filling,
- Theosis – sharing divine life = personal: exercising personal freedom in the mutual exchange of love.
Technical terms are necessary in academic writing, but their meaning should be made clear and they should be used in a consistent manner.
Latin
Latin is not a stick for beating people. Latin should not be used just to silence critics who do not understand Latin. It is easy to hide behind Latin, especially when an author does not have a clear grap of the meaning of the Latin text. Humility is helpful before this great language of western civilisation. Whenever I use Latin texts in my writing, I almost always immediately provide an English rendering. In this way the reader can understand what I think the Latin text means.
Abbreviations
For greater clarity I generally do not use abbreviations in my written prose text. I leave abbreviations to the footnotes.
(Parenthetical comments)
I strongly resist placing prose text in (parentheses) or [brackets]. It is better to use words to tell the reader what you have in mind, rather than to put comments in (parentheses) and expect the reader to figure out why you did so.
Clichés
Beyond eliminating clichés, well composed prose and even poetry do not use the same key word twice in a single sentence. It is best to varry the text, use synonyms, find other ways to express a repeated idea. For example, you can refer to the Gelasianum Vetus, or the Gelasianum, to the Old Gelasian, or the Gelasian, or in a subsequent reference simply to the sacramentary.
The passive voice
While there may be good reason to use the passive voice on occasion, English differs from some other languages by the preferred use of the active voice. Instead of the passive being employed to express what has been said by me, good English prose prefers the active voice so that I can say what I mean.
English also prefers and personal agency. Instead of saying “it dropped”, say “I dropped it”. Instead of saying “It is pleasing to me”, say “I like it”. Instead of saying “It is significant to me that …”, say, “I find it significant that …”.
Rambling
Say what you want to say once, clearly.
Give your work some space
Ovid says that when you write a poem, next put it in a box for eight years. When you open it again, you can then assess its value. While many academic writers do not have such luxury of time, it is helpful to take a break from writing before returning to edit the text. Leave your work for a while, rest, sleep, eat a good meal. Come back on the next day and read the text outloud so that you can reconsider the text afresh. Towards the end of the editing process, I print the document and edit it on paper. For some reason reading the text on paper is a different experience than reading it on the computer screen, and the results are different as well.
Pay attention to structure
Outline
Developing an outline of your work can help you to see the structure and to correct diversions, confusions. An outline can help to clarify your own narrative, your argument. It can keep you on track when writing.
Use all the resources you can
Spelling and grammar checker
Many of my students use Word to write their documents. Use the spelling and grammar corrector to highlight words and text for you to reconsider before handing the work in to the professor. When I am distracted by spelling and grammatical errors, I find it difficult to give my attention to the more important elements of the work such as the content and structure of the argument.
In addition to the headings above, I would add the following of my own.
Let the source texts lead you
Once you have collected the source texts you need to make your point in a part of an article, arrange them in your text in the order in which you wish to present the ideas. Next introduce each author by name and tell the reader why the author is qualified to make a contribution to your work. Also introduce the name and date of the published work. Help the reader to understand the original context for the publication. After presenting each text, tell the reader why the text is important to your argument.
After presenting the primary sources which support your argument, then you can interpret them for the context of your argument. Stay close to the source texts and be careful not to introduce stray or foreigh ideas to the thought of the sources.