Clarity Editing

Clarity Editing

Good writing is rewriting. First draft: get the thought on the page. Second draft: make the thought disappear behind the sentence. This skill is the second draft.

The four editing passes

Run in order. Each pass targets one problem.

Pass 1 — compress

Cut every word that does not carry its weight. Typical savings: 20-40%.

Sentence-level compression: if a sentence is over 25 words, look for a comma that could be a period.

Pass 2 — active voice

Passive voice hides the actor and adds words.

Exceptions — use passive when:

• The actor is irrelevant ("the package was delivered").
• The actor is unknown.
• You deliberately de-emphasize the actor (accountability writing).

Default: active. Every passive sentence should be deliberate.

Pass 3 — strip hedges

Hedges and weasel words sap authority.

If you are genuinely uncertain, say so with a number ("60% confidence") or a named unknown, not a pile of hedges.

Full list and the "hedge audit" technique in references/hedge-and-jargon-removal.md.

Pass 4 — fix nominalizations

A nominalization is a verb disguised as a noun. They make sentences abstract and slow.

Verbs are active. Nouns-that-used-to-be-verbs are not. Prefer the verb.

The clarity checklist

Before shipping:

• Longest sentence under 25 words
• Every passive sentence is deliberate
• No hedges except where confidence is genuinely low
• No jargon the reader does not already use
• No nominalizations that could be verbs
• Each paragraph makes one point
• The opening sentence is the most important sentence

Readability

Aim for reader effort appropriate to the audience.

Readability scores are rough signals, not verdicts. A sentence can be readable and wrong, or hard-to-read and correct. Use as a sanity check, not a judge.

Jargon

Every field has legitimate terminology. The test: does the word carry information the reader cannot get another way?

• Retain: terms with specific meaning in your audience's field ("idempotent", "p95", "cohort retention").
• Cut: corporate filler ("synergy", "leverage" as a verb, "circle back", "touch base").
• Define: terms the reader probably does not know on first use.

A sentence with three pieces of jargon usually needs two of them removed.

Anti-patterns

• Pre-editing cuts — compressing a first draft so aggressively that meaning is lost. Write long first, cut second.
• Sterilizing voice — removing so much hedging and personality that the text reads like a machine. Clarity ≠ neutrality.
• Chained compressions — compressing a compressed sentence until it's gibberish. Stop when the sentence is clear.
• Style over substance — endless passes on words without fixing a structural problem. If the draft is poorly structured, use structured-writing first.
• "Active voice everywhere" — dogmatic use of active voice when passive is warranted.
• "Readability score above 80" — treating the score as the goal rather than the signal.

Workflow

1. Fix structure first. If the doc is poorly structured, no amount of editing fixes it (use structured-writing).
2. Compress. Pass 1. Expect 20-40% shrinkage.
3. Active voice. Pass 2. Every passive becomes deliberate.
4. Strip hedges. Pass 3. Authority or explicit uncertainty, nothing in between.
5. Fix nominalizations. Pass 4. Verbs over nouns-pretending-to-be-verbs.
6. Read aloud. If you stumble, the reader stumbles. Fix the stumble.
7. Check the checklist. Ship.

References

Related skills

• structured-writing — fix structure before fine editing.
• ux-writing — microcopy has different rules (brevity at extreme, voice matters).
• stakeholder-alignment — RFC prose benefits from both structure and editing.
• visual-communication — sometimes the edit is "replace this paragraph with a diagram."