From the course: Editing Mastery: How to Edit Writing to Perfection

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What is the territory of the piece?

What is the territory of the piece?

From the course: Editing Mastery: How to Edit Writing to Perfection

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What is the territory of the piece?

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- Before starting to edit anything, you need to get familiar with what it's content and boundaries are. I call it mapping out the territory of the piece of writing. I can sometimes be lazy about this if I roughly know the content already, but you should be thorough, especially if you're trying this process out for the first time. All mapping out the territory means is reading through what it is that you have to edit, but it also might help to speak to the author to determine exactly their wishes and what they want for the piece. In terms of what they mainly want to communicate and to whom and for what purpose, so that you can really get a grip on the material that you're gonna be editing. Now there are several reasons why you want to do this mapping out work. If you just start editing straight away, you're gonna make lots of assumptions and those assumptions if they're wrong can waste your time if you find out later that you've done a whole bunch of things that you didn't need to or…

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