Power Editing

Substitute “damn” every time you’re inclined to write “very”; your editor will delete it and the writing will be just as it should be.
— Mark Twain

In the Successful Blog Cafe last week Rob at Jamdo’s article offered advice on how to strip out excess words in your posts to increase keyword density. That’s good editing advice. In fact, much of editing is taking out ALL of the words that you don’t need.

Words that Writers Don’t Need

As bloggers, we write in a conversational tone, but conversation moves fast and easy. We can correct if someone doesn’t understand what we’re saying. They can interrupt if we’re going on, and on, and on, and on. We’re likely to notice if our audience walks away while we’re still talking.

Unfortunately, we don’t have those luxuries when the words are written. More written words don’t necessarily build more bridges and rapport. Additional words can get between the reader and our message. Here are places I go to remove extra words that creep in while I’m writing. [Read more…]