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5 Steps to Effective Re-Writing
by Shery Ma Belle Arrieta-Russ

Once you're done writing an article, you're not really done. You might not know it, but that 750-word article you wrote could be pruned down into 500 words or less and it would still be as effective as your original article, if not more.

Writing is all about communicating. It's about getting your message across to your readers simply, quickly, and effectively.

Here are 5 steps to effective re-writing:

1. Stick to your central theme or idea. Don't insert bits and pieces of information about other things. Read through your work carefully. There will be times you're bound to find ideas within your work that could be stricken off.

2. Beware of long introductions. It's OK to start with an introductory paragraph, but some writers tend to write introductions that span several paragraphs. It's best to start with the most striking sentence, quote, or idea and then go on from there.

3. Rearrange words, phrases and sentences. Often, merely rearranging words within a sentence will shorten that sentence. The trick here is to find prepositions and eliminate them. Also, break down long sentences containing two or more ideas. You'll be able to eliminate conjunctions, articles and prepositions that way.

4. Are you being redundant? If you used something like "absolutely complete," "ask the question," "for a span of one month," or "factual information," then you've managed to be redundant. It's either complete or not -- you don't have to add the "absolutely" to make your point. Do you ask a statement? Of course not! So it's already OK if you just use "ask." You say "for one month." You don't have to add "a span of." And lastly, save yourself the trouble and just use "facts" instead of "factual information."

5. Get rid of dangling modifiers and participles, awkward prepositional phrases, and unnecessary adjectives. Look your work over to see if you have cliches. You may have overdone and overused metaphors too.

Copyright © 2001 Shery Ma Belle Arrieta-Russ

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