Editing Tips

You'll be writing A LOT, and some if it will be done quickly to keep you competitive (for instance, in breaking news events). Your fingers will inevitably get sloppy, and your eyes will get tired. Use the resources available to you to ensure your copy stays clean and consistent. Learn to hone your self-editing skills and don't forget about our Style Guide! You can find answers to many of your questions there!

Each team is assigned a copy editor. Find out who your designated copy editor is from your team manager.

Self-Editing Tips

As much as we'd like every story to get a copy edit, sometimes it's just not feasible. You'll need to rely on your own sharp eyes and quick thinking to keep your copy strong. We've provided some tips below to help!

Read from the bottom up: While a top-to-bottom read lets you follow your story’s flow, reading from the bottom breaks that flow and forces you to see sentences out of order and context, a bit more distinct as individual pieces of information

Read out loud: This forces you to hear what you wrote, which can help provide another dimension and perspective. If there’s a problem, the sound of it — clunky flow or a missing word, for example — will help bring it to your attention.

See what readers see: After you’ve clicked the publish button, definitely take time to review your story in the format in which readers will see it. It’s different from the CMS format and offers an alternative perspective that also might help you catch errors and omissions.

Also, look at how your story appears on a mobile device, which is how most people view our content; problems — including formatting — can become much more obvious there.

Print out your story. You might be surprised how differently we perceive something on paper from how we see it on a screen. It provides yet another, often-revealing, dimension to words. (Paper or full-page proofs were an essential part of the newspaper editing process.)

Get up off your … chair. Taking a break to walk around can accomplish a couple things: It puts some mental distance between you and your story to give a fresh perspective to what you’re trying to say. It also frees up your mind a bit to work on wording without being fixed on what you’ve already written.

Triple-check these elements of your story:

• Headline

• Subhead

• Cutline

• Lede and second graph