The easy distinction between step 3, revision, and step 4, editing, is scale. Revision is about the big picture. Step 4 is when you start sweating the small stuff.

A common misconception is that editing means catching mistakes. It does mean that, but editing is so much more.

Professional editors attend to “the 5 Cs of copyediting.” (That’s right: no apostrophe after C, and the period goes inside the quotation marks.) The goal is to make every piece of writing:
A. Clear
B. Correct
C. Comprehensive
D. Concise
E. Consistent

Only B, “correct,” is about catching mistakes. The rest are about making your text communicate more effectively.

If you’re working through the 5-step writing process and have accomplished step 3, revision, you have already addressed A, C, and D to some extent.

In step 4, you try, yes, to correct mistakes. You also focus (usually for the first time) on consistency. You may continue to improve clarity, comprehensiveness, and concision, working now with sentences and paragraphs rather than whole documents or sections.

I can teach you to be a better editor of your own work  – but not in a 300-word blog post.

You have 1,001 things to worry about, from subject-verb agreement (part of correctness) to the way you treat bulleted or numbered lists (part of consistency). You should:

And you’re just getting started! Honestly, reading my e-letter/blog isn’t the best way to learn editing skills, as I tend to focus on big-picture issues.

So next time I’ll share resources and strategies for editing your own work. Or you could take the easy way out: Hire me to take care of all 5 Cs at once.