edit

Editing is the pass that changes how a draft is written, with the ideas left exactly as they are. An editor fixes the mechanics: punctuation, spelling, capital letters, and the agreement of subjects with their verbs and of pronouns with the words they stand for. A sentence comes out of an editing pass meaning what it meant going in, so a reader who compares the two versions finds the same point made more cleanly. Editing is the narrower of the two writing passes, and holding it apart from revising is the whole distinction: a writer who edits while still deciding what to say will polish a paragraph that may not survive the next draft. Editing follows revision and leaves the text ready for a proofread.