Polishing Your Prose

So you wrote your article or essay and feel ready to click send. Not so fast. Once you have written a piece, it’s important to edit yourself and revise. As an editor, writing coach, and adjunct writing professor at New York University, I teach my students these tips on how to get their work ready to send out the door.

1. HAVE YOU ELIMINATED THROAT CLEARING SO YOU HAVE A STRONG INTRO? A powerful opening brings your reader right into the action through dialogue, surprising statements, or questions posed to the reader. If any words don’t move the story forward, scrap them.

For example, one student wrote