A useful idea I've stolen from sailing: a piece of writing has an anchor and the rest drifts.

The anchor is the one fixed claim the essay protects. Everything else — examples, qualifications, footnotes, the order of paragraphs — can move. If the anchor is strong, the drift doesn't matter much; the essay holds. If the anchor is weak or missing, the essay drifts apart no matter how tight the prose.

Most "this isn't working" feelings during editing are anchor problems disguised as sentence problems.

Related: The shape of an essay, Editing as thinking.

Comments

Comments are moderated. No email, no IP collection.