5 Edit / Finds That Will Strengthen Your Writing Today

The computer is my candidate for the eighth wonder of the world!

Image by Tumisu from Pixabay

When a friend told me he wrote his entire book in long-hand, I was stunned. What a tedious, time-consuming feat, I thought. I’ve been typing since high school and can’t imagine any other way to write anything beyond a haiku or single-sentence journal entry.

But, the real magic of the computer is in Word: spell-check and word count, and their sister, edit/find.

With the latter, I can “search” for words that slow down the flow and readability in my writing. Most of them I can kick out.

I’ve identified five words that consistently fall into this category.

Here’s how I use edit/find to “weed” my writing after the first or second draft:

In the word program, I select “edit” from the tool bar, then go to “find.”

1 — In the box I type only two letters: “ly.”

Up will pop words like quickly, immediately, suddenly, warmly, quietly, softly, instantly, darkly, etc.

I examine carefully each sentence where an ly word pops up.