Structural editing

What structural editing is

Structural editing is the edit of a document's shape: which sections it has, what order they come in, what each one is for, what is missing, and what is there that should not be. It happens before any sentence is polished, because there is no point perfecting a paragraph that is going to move or go. Of all the edits, it changes the most and is asked for the least, because a writer can see a typo but rarely sees that their own chapter three belongs first.

It is not line editing, which works within sentences, and it is not copyediting, which corrects them. Those come afterwards. It is also not a rewrite: your words stay, in a different order, with gaps filled and surplus removed. If the document needs writing again from the reader up, that is a page rewrite, and I will say so.

When you need one

The signs are consistent. Readers say the document is "thorough" and then ask a question it answered on page seven. The introduction is the last thing written and the first thing read, and it promises something the body does not deliver. Two sections say the same thing because two people wrote them. The recommendation is in the conclusion, where nobody reaches it. The proposal keeps losing to a shorter one. The guide is 60 pages because nobody was allowed to cut anything.

It suits reports, proposals, white papers, guides, manuals, long web pages, presentations, and any document assembled by more than one author. It is also the right first step on a draft whose writer knows it is not working but cannot say why.

It is the wrong service when the document is short and the order is obviously fine. A four-page letter with a few weak sentences needs a line edit. And when the document is long but well organised and simply says too much, tightening is faster and cheaper.

What gets looked at

I read the whole document once without a pen, as the intended reader would, and write down what I thought it was about and what I wanted to know that it did not tell me. Then I take it apart.

The purpose. One sentence: what this document has to make the reader think, decide or do. If the document cannot be reduced to one sentence, that is the first finding. Every section is then judged by whether it serves that sentence.

The outline. Every heading and the point each section makes, listed on one page. Read that way, the problems show themselves: the section that makes no point, the two that make the same one, the argument that depends on something not introduced until later.

The order. Business readers want the conclusion first, the reasoning second and the detail last, and they want to be able to stop at any point knowing the most important thing so far. Most drafts are in the order the writer thought of things. I reorder to the order the reader needs them.

The gaps and the surplus. What question would a sceptical reader ask at each point, and does the next paragraph answer it? Where it does not, I mark a gap and describe what belongs there. Where a passage answers no question the reader has, I mark it for cutting or for an appendix.

The signposting. Headings that say what the section concludes, not what it is about. An opening that states the answer. Transitions that tell the reader why the next section follows this one.

What you get

The editorial memo. Three to six pages, and the core of the service. It states the document's purpose in one sentence, shows the current outline beside the proposed one, explains every move, cut and gap, and lists what needs writing to fill the gaps, with a sentence or two describing each. You can act on the memo without anything else.

The restructured draft. Your text, reordered into the new outline, with cut material moved to a holding section at the end rather than deleted, and each gap marked in place with a note on what goes there. Where a short bridging paragraph is needed to make the new order flow, I write it and mark it as mine.

A walkthrough call. Forty-five minutes, going through the memo with whoever owns the document. Restructuring is the one edit people push back on, and the call is where the pushback gets heard and the outline gets settled.

A worked example

An illustration, not a client. An engineering consultancy has a 48-page proposal template it sends to municipalities for stormwater projects. It wins about as often as it loses, and the partners suspect the document. It opens with eleven pages on the firm's history and staff, puts the technical approach in the middle, and states the price and schedule on page 44. The section a municipal evaluator scores most heavily, how the firm will manage risk, is spread across four places.

The structural edit produces a new outline of nine sections. Page one is a single-page summary: what the municipality asked for, what the firm proposes, what it costs, how long it takes. The risk material is gathered into one section of three pages and moved to third position. The firm's history goes to a two-page appendix. Two sections that each described the project team are merged. The template drops to 31 pages, and the evaluator finds every scored item under a heading that names it. Nothing new is claimed. The same firm, described in the order the reader scores it.

How it runs

1. A half-hour call. What the document is for, who reads it, what happens when it works and what happens now. No charge.
2. A fixed price in writing. Based on length and on how many authors and stakeholders are involved, agreed before I start.
3. The cold read and the memo. One to two weeks. You get the memo first, before the draft is touched.
4. The walkthrough. We settle the outline together. Anything you overrule stays as you want it.
5. The restructured draft. Delivered within a week of the outline being agreed, with gaps marked and cut material preserved.

What it costs

Structural editing is quoted as a fixed price in CAD after the half-hour call. The price depends on the length of the document, on how many people have to agree to the new shape, and on whether you want me to write the material for the gaps or leave that to your team. The pricing page explains how edits are quoted.

What happens next

The gaps get written, by you or by me, and then the sentences get their turn: a line edit for the voice and a copyedit for correctness, in that order. If the document was a proposal, the restructured version becomes the template, and proposal copy is the service for making each one specific to the bid. And if the restructuring showed that the document was really three documents, that is a conversation, not a service, and it is free.