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1. Staying on track
Maintaining the focus of a piece of writing is another important element of the editing stage. Writers are notoriously protective of their work. Crafting a text can be a painful, time consuming process. After investing so much time and effort, it is very difficult for some writers to recognize and delete tangential sentences or passages — particularly if they are well-crafted or contain brilliant ideas. Writers can also be blinded to generalizations that do
not adequately cover the specifics of a topic. In short, taking on an editor’s role often conflicts with the writer’s emotional and intellectual investment in the writing process. For that reason, it is common for many writers to distance themselves from the text before editing it, or to ask someone else to read the text as a dispassionate editor.
2. Maintaining objectivity
Inaccurate information can also be dispersed by well-meaning sources. For example, a distraught mother who claims that her incarcerated son is an innocent victim of a federal law might have reached that erroneous conclusion as a result of her own emotional investment in her son’s case, as opposed to the facts of the case. To maintain objectivity, one can report the mother’s perspective as her factual, though undocumented, point of view, while also reporting the contents of the actual arrest warrant or any other claims communicated by the
arresting authority.
3. Fact-Checking
Editors have a responsibility to fact check before printing an article. Fact checking is an important part of writing an accurate article. Meticulous authors do research prior to committing their thoughts to paper. Not all authors are so careful. Editors and readers serve society and themselves well when they read with a judicious eye. Just because a piece is written and printed does not necessarily make it true. The ability to check facts, coupled be with an openness to a possible bias on the part of an author, will enable the discernment of truth or distortion.
NatalieR answered the question on June 15, 2022 at 08:53