In one sentence
Good editing is primarily the removal of ambiguity and excess: determine exactly what you mean, then make the wording, structure, and presentation serve that meaning and the reader.
Overview
Parish explains how she edits emails, fiction, academic writing, and technical documentation. She begins with a private “preamble” stating the piece’s purpose, audience, tone, and intended effect. During revision, she favors purposeful repetition, concise syntax, active voice, specific verbs, explicit context, consistent tone, plain language, and generous visual structure. She closes by reducing the method to two rules: say exactly what you mean and remove unnecessary words. These are heuristics, not commandments; the point is to make conscious choices.
Core ideas
Start with intention, not sentences
Before line editing, write down the main point, intended audience, and—where relevant—the narrator, tone, or mood. Use this as a test of whether the finished piece achieves its purpose, separating craft questions from personal preference.
Repeat the message strategically
Readers benefit when a document previews its purpose, develops it, and closes with a summary or verification step. At the sentence level, replace vague references such as “this” or “that” with the relevant noun when doing so improves clarity.
Simplify aggressively
Remove filler, shorten constructions, prefer direct imperatives in instructions, move useful modifiers closer to the nouns they describe, and split overloaded sentences. Concision is valuable because it lets readers reach the meaning faster.
Use active voice to expose responsibility
Active constructions identify who or what performs an action. This improves readability and precision, especially in technical writing, where passive phrasing can conceal which service, person, or component caused an event.
Prefer specificity over adverbs and hedges
Adverbs often substitute for a more exact verb or description; words such as “basically” and “essentially” can soften or obscure a claim. Parish’s advice is to describe the intended action or quality precisely and commit to the statement.
Do not make readers reconstruct context
Spell out acronyms on first use, briefly explain introduced concepts, and link to further information when useful. Expertise creates blind spots: what seems obvious to the writer may be inaccessible to a new reader.
Keep tone coherent
Colloquial and formal language can both work, but an unexplained shift between them distracts readers. Choose a tone appropriate to the audience and maintain it across the piece.
Replace insider language with direct language
Jargon and clichés signal group membership while often failing to communicate a concrete request or idea. State what is needed, what it means, and—when relevant—by when.
Practical takeaways
- Before drafting or revising, write a one- or two-sentence statement of the piece’s purpose and audience.
- Read every paragraph asking: What am I actually saying, and does this sentence help say it?
- Replace “You should…” and “You can…” with a direct imperative when giving instructions.
- Search for passive constructions and name the actor, system, or component responsible for each action.
- Cut hedges, filler, vague demonstratives, jargon, clichés, and unnecessary “of” or “for” phrases.
- Define every acronym or specialized term for the least-informed reasonable reader.
- Read for tonal consistency, not just grammar.
- Format for skimming: short paragraphs, informative headings, lists, tables, and selective bolding.
Caveats and counterpoints
- The advice is intentionally prescriptive. Parish acknowledges that adverbs, passive voice, repetition, jargon, and informal language can have legitimate purposes; her recommendation is to use them deliberately rather than automatically.
- “Eliminate passive voice” is best treated as a clarity heuristic, not an absolute grammatical rule. Passive voice can be useful when the actor is unknown, irrelevant, or intentionally backgrounded.
- Repeating a point can aid comprehension, but excessive repetition can feel padded—hence Parish’s qualification that it should be done within reason.
- The article emphasizes sentence-level clarity and document usability more than higher-level editorial issues such as evidence, argument quality, sequencing, factual accuracy, or representation of competing perspectives.
- Her examples are especially oriented toward workplace and technical communication, so literary editing may require preserving ambiguity, rhythm, voice, or unusual diction rather than simplifying them.
Questions worth revisiting
- What is the one-sentence purpose of the piece I am editing?
- Who is the least-informed reasonable reader, and what context do they need?
- Where does the writing make the reader infer the actor, referent, or intended action?
- Which words can be removed without losing meaning—and which unusual words are essential to voice or emphasis?
- Am I applying a style rule mechanically, or can I explain why this choice serves the message?
- Does the structure support both close reading and skimming?
Return to this when…
Return to these notes before editing any email, documentation, essay, or creative draft when the prose feels vague, bloated, uneven in tone, or difficult to scan. The quickest refresher is: define the aim, name the meaning, cut the excess, and format for the reader.