How does refining style and clarity help B2B companies?

• Aug 11, 2020
• 5 min read

• Tags: Editing, Editing and Proofreading

Apart from helping to eliminate grammatical errors, punctuation and spelling mistakes, editing can help make your writing more polished and grants a clarity to it, enabling your audience to understand it better. This is especially helpful for companies whose main product is their content. And not just for content, editing and proofreading helps you make your social media copy crisp and eye-catching, apart from making other miscellaneous content such as newsletters, emails effective. Usually editing is divided into 3 parts – the first level is dedicated to getting rid of grammatical errors, the second level is for refining style and clarity, and the third level is for feedback on the content and its meaning. We are going to be focusing on how refining style and clarity helps B2B companies, bleeding a little into the third level.

What is refining style and clarity?

After your editor has finished weeding out grammatical and punctuation errors, and spelling mistakes, they will move on to refining the style and clarity of your copy. This will include:

1. Sentence-wise editing: The editor will go beyond technical editing and look at the meaning. They will focus on making the sentences stylistically suitable to the message that you’re trying to put forth.  This level of editing also works on refining the tone, coherence, cohesion, syntax, clarity, and diction. 
2. Paragraph construction: The editor helps to structure your copy and refines your copy to make it complete.
3. After refining text and clarity, the editor moves on to the next stage of editing, which is also called as substantive editing. This consists of broad feedback, with the content of the entire document in consideration. 
4. The editor critically examine the argument and the content

How does it help B2B companies?

1. Makes your copy crisp and eye-catching.

The editor edits your copy sentence-by-sentence, looking out for any way to make the copy clearer and readable. They think of the audience that you are catering to and the language that they might be accustomed to and restructure your sentences according to that. For example, if you are an advertising company and your copy is getting lengthy, the editor makes sure that it is crisp and to the point.

2. Refines the tone of your content.

The editor suggests edits that make your copy more suitable for the audience that you are targeting. For example, if you want to sound informal, the editor will pick on words like ‘as mentioned’, ‘furthermore’, ‘cordially’, and replace them with suitable alternatives. The tone of your document depends on the language and the way the sentences are structured. Editing helps refine the tone of your document according to the content and the audience that it is catering.

3. Coherence and Cohesion

Coherence is the connection of ideas at the idea level, and cohesion means the connection of ideas at the sentence level. Coherence in writing refers to the ‘rhetorical’ aspects of it, such as developing and stating an argument, organizing ideas, clarifying writing,  and the cohesion refers to the ‘grammatical aspect’ of writing. An editor ensures that there is cohesion and coherence in your copy by suggesting additions, and making corrections wherever needed, refining the clarity and style of your text.

4. Employs the appropriate diction

Diction is the defined as the overall choice of words and phrases which are endemic to an individual. An editor ensures that the diction of your copy is appropriate to the kind of meaning and content it comprises, plus how it reflects your company’s image.

5. Paragraph-wise structuring

An editor helps in structuring your copy paragraph-wise, so that it’s readable and clear to your target audience.

Editing and proofreading is necessary for B2B companies because an editor helps the professional copy to be audience-appropriate, crisp, engaging and helps project a brand image that other companies would want to know more about. To read more article on why editing and proofreading is an important part of the writing process, visit the PaperTrue Resource Center!

Found this article helpful?

1

0

Rishi

Rishi was a zealous student at IIT Bombay when he realized, firsthand, the power of good language in effective communication. As part of this belief, after a brief stint in a hedge fund, he co-founded PaperTrue in 2014.