The (Editing) Checklist Manifesto

Start with the big picture, then edit your sentences.

Hack news

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• Writing Hacks has been on a break while I readjust to teaching on campus (it’s great to be back to in-person teaching!), but I plan to publish more regularly in 2022. I’ve been saving reader questions for a new Q&A feature I’ll be adding in the new year. Please send me your writing and editing questions by posting in the comments or hitting reply on this email.

• Harvard Business Review recently released this video version of my article “3 Ways to Make Your Writing Clearer.” I’m curious to know what you think about video advice vs. written advice.

This week’s Hack: To edit efficiently, try using a checklist.

Last week I had the pleasure of talking to the students in Harvard Medical School’s Effective Writing for Health Care Program about editing their own work. Because they are medical professionals, I knew they would be familiar with Atul Gawande’s book The Checklist Manifesto, in which he talks about how the use of surgical checklists (and checklists in many other professions) can save lives.  In his New Yorker article about the same topic, Gawande writes about a critical-care doctor named Peter Pronovost, who designed a checklist for one specific ICU procedure. Gawande reports that, in Pronovost’s view, checklists “helped with memory recall, especially with mundane matters that are easily overlooked in patients undergoing more drastic events” and “a second effect was to make explicit the minimum, expected steps in complex processes.” 

While writing isn’t the same as taking care of patients in the ICU, checklists can play a similar role the editing process. If you use a checklist, you’re less likely to miss small errors in your writing—and more likely to edit efficiently. Here are some other potential benefits of using an editing checklist:

• Creating an editing checklist for different writing situations can help you identify your goals for a particular piece of writing.

• Using an editing checklist can help you put yourself in the shoes of your readers. My students always find it easier to point to what’s not working in someone else’s writing than in their own writing. Because we know what we’re trying to say, we may miss the spots where we haven’t quite said it yet. If you use a checklist, you force yourself to read for what you might otherwise miss.  

• Using an editing checklist can help you recognize when it’s time to let go. Sometimes it’s hard to know when to stop revising, and you may find yourself spending more time than you have on a piece of writing. If you create and follow a checklist, you can use it to help you decide when you’re finished.

How do you know what to include in your editing checklist?

What you put on your checklist will depend on what types of documents you write. If you write for clients, you will probably want to include questions on your checklist about your specific audience. (Have I used scientific terms appropriately for my audience? Have I included appropriate background information?) If you write proposals with multiple sections, you may want to include questions on your checklist about whether you have included useful subheadings and whether all points are in the right sections. If you write emails, you may want to include a question about whether your subject line reflects your main point.

No matter what you’re writing, you should begin your checklist with big-picture items (introduction, organization) and then move to sentence-level changes (unnecessary words, ambiguous pronouns). If you start with sentence edits, you’re going to end up wasting time once you realize that some of those sentences don’t need to be there at all.

If you want to try editing with a checklist, you can start with the template I’ve included below and customize it based on what you’re writing. I’ve included links in the checklist to other Hacks that provide guidance on specific points. If you have suggestions for additional checklist questions, please share in the comments.

 

Introduction

√ Is your first sentence strong? Avoid beginning with something too sweeping like “since the dawn of time, people have bought homes. I sell homes.”

√ Is your tone appropriate for your audience? (Are you addressing colleagues? Customers? Supervisors? Readers of a publication?)

√ Is your claim/point/main idea clearly presented?

Organization

√ Is the order of your paragraphs logical?

√ If you are using subheadings, are they effective in signaling the purpose of each section? Should anything be moved to another section?

√ Does the topic sentence of each paragraph help readers understand the focus of the paragraph?

√ Are the transitions between your paragraphs clear?

Conclusion

√ Where do you leave the reader?

√ Should anything in your conclusion come earlier? (Sometimes the best version of your main point comes at the end in your draft. MOVE IT TO THE BEGINNING!)

Sentences

√ Check for ambiguous pronouns (this/it/they: is the antecedent clear?).

√ Check for passive and active voice (know why you’re using one or the other).

√ Look for unnecessary words (actually, basically, really, very).

√ Check for repetition of words, sentences, and paragraphs.

√ Are you using jargon that readers won’t understand or don’t need? 

Punctuation, grammar, typos

√ Edit for punctuation, grammar, and typos last so that you don’t spend valuable time editing sentences you are going to delete or rewrite.

In his New Yorker article about the benefits of checklists,  Atul Gawande also acknowledges their limitations, noting that “It’s ludicrous, though, to suppose that checklists are going to do away with the need for courage, wits, and improvisation.” That’s no doubt true in medicine, and it’s also true in writing. Checklists can’t provide you with a strong message or an original idea. But if you have something to say, a checklist can help you make sure you’re saying it as clearly as possible.