Final revision editing

Many are more experienced that I, so here is a quick tip that I used recently when making final editing revisions on a manuscript.

One of the last things to do in editing is to highlight weasel words, passive voice (was/were), general weak verbs, tighten your prose words, and general words that you tend to overuse. But HOW do you do that quick and easy? By finding and highlighting them:-)

For grins, I will search and highlight all WAS words (not case sensitive) to yellow:

1. In Word, click highlight in the toolbar and select YELLOW
2. <control>f (for FIND), enter the word “was” in the FIND WHAT field
3. click on the REPLACE tab, then enter the word “was” in the REPLACE WITH field
4. click on the MORE button then the FORMAT button, click the word HIGHLIGHT
5. click REPLACE ALL

Repeat for all other words you want to highlight in your manuscript. Word will replace the letters in a case-sensitive manner.

I took the liberty to use different colors for different types of words: I used yellow for passive voice, blue for weasel words, purple for weak verbs and so on. Then I was able to scan the entire document and replace as needed.

When done editing, hit <control>a then click highlight in the toolbar and select NO COLOR. All the highlighting goes away.

Let me know if this post helped you 🙂