Editing Your Own Policies and Procedures - Yes, You Really Can Do it Yourself
Few companies can afford the luxury of providing professional editors to help policies and procedures writers with their various published policy or procedure writers. So what does it mean if we cannot afford editors? Simple, we have to edit our own work and I am the first to say that editing yourself is not easy. I can't edit my own work and this effect is often reflective in my books. I hire editors but they don't catch everything either. I do not think I have ever read a book where there was not at least one or more errors in judgment.
So what do you do? Again, this is a simple answer. Do it yourself but be careful. There are several stages to a writing process through I am only going to give you pointers as to how to edit your own work.
- Do not edit right away. Put the draft aside for at least 24 hours and then read it through.
- Perform the edit in a quiet place where you won't be interrupted.
- Make several passes through your document, spelling on one pass, grammar on the second, and general structure on the third.
- Print a copy of the draft and read the printed version; it is so much easier to catch mistakes in printed form.
- Keep a style sheet handy so you will be consistent throughout this document and others.
- Most important, purchase the book, Edit Yourself, from Amazon.com and you will be amazed on what you can catch.
- Lastly, have a friend, spouse, or work peer review your work. If you developed you draft using a team, have at least one team member review your final draft. It is always amazing to me what other people catch.
And finally, I do admit that some of my policies and procedures and even my books have errors but it is rare when I don't see a book or magazine article without errors. Very rare indeed. No one is perfect. But the reader should be paying attention to content and not to the grammar or style of your draft. Keep this in mind and do the best you can when editing your own stuff.
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