Last-minute strategies for improving your copy

The one immutable fact of this business is the deadline. If your copy is due, it's due. You let go of it whether you're totally satisfied or not.

But we all finish some assignments well before deadline. Often we have minutes, hours or even days between the time we finish writing and the time our editors absolutely must have the copy.

We don't always make the best use of that time.

The natural tendency is to push the "send" button the minute you type the last word of the kicker. Once you're done with an assignment, it's perfectly normal to want it off your back. Immediately.

Besides, what editor ever criticized a writer who turned in copy early?

Still, it almost always pays to take a little extra time if you have it. Running through a simple checklist of last-minute self-editing checks can make all the difference in your story. And it can spare your editors a lot of grief.

Here's a list of quick-and-dirty editing steps that you may find helpful:

• Print it.
  Type on a computer screen is one thing. Hard copy is something else. Awkward phrasings and just plain errors that slide right by in electronic form often will jump off the printed page.
  
  It sometimes helps to get out of your writing chair and away from your computer. Head for a lunch counter, coffee shop or park bench. Then read the copy slowly, thinking about the impact your prose will have on a reader who's seeing it for the first time. The point is to view the material in a different form, and therefore from a different perspective.
  
  Try the old trick of reading the copy backward, one word at a time. That forces you to see each individual word as it actually is, rather than as your mind would like it to be.
  
  After I first printed this manuscript, I read it at a nearby deli. I made 12 changes. And the meatloaf sandwich was great.
  
  
• Read it aloud.
  Nothing will benefit you more. Reading your copy in printed form shows you things you won't see on a computer screen. Hearing what you've written gives you even more dispassionate distance. You'll discover nuances of clarity, rhythm and interpretation you never suspected.
  
  Author John Sayles says he always reads scripts aloud. He does his readings in a flat voice so that he can concentrate on the naked words without the added impact that an actor's inflection brings to them.
  
  Broadcast writers, who consciously craft their work for the ear, also stress the importance of reading aloud. Walk into most big broadcast newsrooms right before deadline, and you'll hear a cacophony of voices writers sounding out the sentences that will soon appear on the air.
  
  But reading aloud isn't part of the print-reporting culture. So few magazine and newspaper writers take advantage of this simple polishing tool. Reporters whose words will soon appear before hundreds of thousands of readers are shy about being overheard by the reporter at the next desk.
  
  
• Add periods.
  Writers who really demand attention seldom average more than 17 words per sentence. Of course, they vary sentence length to add interest. And they sometimes let clean, well-ordered sentences run on for 30 or 35 words. But then they change gears. A good mix contains some sentences of six words or fewer.
  
  Newsroom old-timers like to tell the story about the city editor frustrated by a young writer addicted to 50- and 60-word sentences. The old curmudgeon sat down at his typewriter and banged away at a single key, filling a page with periods. Then he walked across the newsroom and confronted the neophyte.
  
  "Here," he said, handing over the sheet of copy paper. "We call these periods. We have lots of them. So use all you want. When you finish with these, come back and see me. I'll give you some more."
  
  
• Eliminate prepositional phrases.
  Prepositional phrases often waste space and bog down sentences. Cut them whenever a shorter form works better.
  
  One tactic is to make the object of the preposition modify its antecedent directly. Write "the preposition's object," rather than "object of the preposition." Replace "the wall of the museum" with "the museum's wall."
  
  If compressing a prepositional phrase downplays an idea you consider important, try breaking the idea out into a separate sentence. After all, you have all those extra periods to work with.
  
  
• Cut the flab.
  Paula LaRocque, writing coach at the Dallas Morning News, says that anything that doesn't add to a piece of writing takes away. Unnecessary words deflate impact by padding the active, precise vocabulary that carries core meaning.
  
  Some flab inevitably creeps into first drafts. So rewriting should focus on cutting anything superfluous. The simplest technique is still the best: Work your way through the draft, eliminating each word mentally. If you can remove a word in your imagination without doing great harm, remove it from the draft, too.
  
  
• Advance the story.
  Flab is one thing. Relevance is something else.
  
  One of the fundamental principles of fiction is that every word should move the story ahead. Any background detail or bit of dialogue that doesn't is a self-indulgent distraction. Writers committed to their art will cut such diversions, ruthlessly.
  
  That guideline applies to nonfiction writers as well. They may not be working with a story per se. But even the most basic magazine or newspaper article should have a strong and self-evident theme, or focus. Is that anecdote about Grandpa's ham sandwich really essential to your article on baking Russian rye?
  It's hard to cut a great anecdote, a sparkling simile or a clever bit of phrasing, even if it doesn't relate well to the main story line. That's why Don Fry calls this process "killing the babies."
  
  So weigh all words and phrases. If they don't advance the story or buttress your focus, hold your breath and pull the trigger.
  
  
• Be specific.
  Concrete nouns, verbs and modifiers add energy. Abstractions let it float away. Vibrant writers always ask themselves if they can make each word in the draft more specific without sacrificing essential meaning. During the final edit, they substitute "audience" for "people who attended." They delete "walked slowly" and write "ambled." With every read-through, they eliminate abstractions and add concrete images that readers can visualize. The detail adds weight, and the weight adds impact.
  
  
• Strengthen your verbs.
  Nothing injects energy like action. And only verbs describe action. They deserve a lot of end-stage attention.
  
  Transitive verbs create the most ruckus. They take direct objects, which generate causal flow. "Its claws raked her back." "He drove two runners home." "The fire swallowed the first floor."
  
  Intransitive verbs contain power, too. "The tanker exploded with volcanic force." "The skier plunged into empty space." "A line snapped, and the cargo slid toward the rail."
  
  But linking verbs contain no motion, therefore weakening writing. They merely state that some things are (or are not) in some way the same as others. "The moon is blue." "The contract talks were tedious." "The ground felt spongy."
  
  So try converting linking verbs to stronger forms. "The moon turned blue." "The ground gave way under her feet."
  You can also strengthen your copy by turning weak nouns into powerful verbs. Look for suffixes, which often gut the energy in a word's root. Every time you see "a-n-c-e," "a-g-e," "m-e-n-t" and so on, drop it and go for the root verb.
  
  Instead of "gained entrance," for example, writer "entered." Instead of "since passage of the bond," write "since the bond passed." Prefer "depend" to "dependent," and "treat" to "treatment." Look for strong verb roots in words such as "seizure," "acceptance," "closure," "intrusive" and "graduation."
  And don't ever be guilty of an abomination like the one a university bureaucrat once sent me. I complained because my paycheck was late. In a return letter, she said I'd get my money "as soon as the forms we sent you are in receivement."
  
  
• Check transitions.
  Bill Blundell, retired star reporter and writing coach at the Wall Street Journal, says transitions are overrated. Careful organization and strong story lines, he says, make the best transitions. When one point or action follows logically from another, you don't have to pop up constantly with the observation that "meanwhile, back at the ranch... ."
  
  So a good final review includes a check to make sure you haven't left any canyons in your logic or unexplained leaps in your plot. Of course, you can review for places that need explicit transitions, too. Focus on the gaps between paragraphs. Look for places that need transition words - such as "of course" at the beginning of this paragraph, "so" in the preceding paragraph and ... yes ... "meanwhile."
  
  You may also spot places that could use paragraph hooks - words that link material by showing up in the last sentence of one paragraph and the first sentence of the next. For example, "review" links the second and third paragraphs of this item, hooking the sentence ending with "plot" to the one beginning "of course."
  
  
• Recast for rhythm.
  One of reading's great pleasures is the sound that a well-crafted sentence created in your head.
  
  William Zinsser, the author of "On Writing Well," urges that "considerations of sound and rhythm be woven through everything you write." Reading aloud brings rhythm into high relief. Listen for pleasing patterns and build on them. Be alert to awkward constructions and recast them. Make sure sentences and paragraphs vary in length and form.
  
  Look, too, for chances to add alliteration. Rewriting the preceding paragraph produced "pleasing patterns," and I was able to parlay that into even more alliteration this sentence.
  
  Achieving graceful written rhythms is largely a process of trial and error. Take time to try different versions of the same sentence. Which one is most pleasing to your inner ear?
  
  
• Define your terms.
  The last couple of trips through your copy are times for maximum reader empathy. Who's your audience? How are individual readers likely to differ from you ... and one another? What do you take for granted that bears explaining for a significant number of readers?
  
  I'm not much of a cook. So I was powerfully grateful to the writer who told me, in a recipe, that the zest of an orange or lemon was "the colored part of the peel."
  
  And I myself once took care to explain a term that most of my fishing buddies would never question. A jack salmon, I wrote, is a confused male that - for some reason - returns to the spawning beds in its home stream one or more years before it's supposed to.
  
  The late DeWitt Reddick, founding dean of the journalism school at the University of Texas, said that a good definition has three elements: (1.) It names the larger class to which the thing belongs. (2.) It explains how the thing is different from other members of the class. (3.) It provides - if necessary - an illustration.
  So, a fisherman like me might define a Dolly Varden as (1) a trout (2) that is marked with red spots and lives in the American West and (3) that looks something like a large Eastern brook trout. Of course, part 3 of my definition connects only with folks who've seen a brook trout. So an actual picture would be even better.
  
  
• Convert negatives to positives.
  As you make the final read, key in on "not" and "no." Then figure out a way to say what is, rather than what isn't.
  Positive forms are usually more clear and more direct than their negative counterparts. So convert "the food was not colorful and had no distinctive tastes" to "the food looked and tasted bland." Turn "the decision was not unanimous" into "the vote was divided."
  
  
• Do the math.
  While some of you undoubtedly are exceptions, journalists are notoriously bad at math. That's all the more reason to be careful.
  Never include numbers in a manuscript without double-checking them. In charts, cross-tabulate columns and rows to make sure they match. Make sure percentage breakdowns add up to 100. Know the difference between an increase of 3 percent and an increase of 3 percentage points. Don't mix up means, medians and modes. And don't make readers jump through mathematical hoops by, for example, reporting one figure in ounces, another in pounds and yet another in kilograms.
  
  Count everything twice to make sure you aren't stung by the worst kind of embarrassments.