My favorite way to edit is what I call responsive editing — doing what the document needs most instead of approaching it with a fixed plan.
As I see it, if there are big holes in your argument or story, it’s wise to fix them before drilling into each sentence, and if a sentence needs to be rewritten, there’s no point getting finicky about the punctuation of the existing version. After all, once it’s deleted, it won’t matter whether it had too many commas.
With responsive editing, we send the document back and forth between us several times. Each time I get it, I go through the whole thing and make a round of edits and comments. As the big issues are resolved, I shift my focus to making sure the smallest details are exactly right.
Responsive editing is appropriate when you have the time to polish your project at every level.
The first step is to “respond” to this form.