Editing: a biography before and after

Editing is reworking a text in passes: the point first, facts instead of judgments, structure, tone and what is allowed. So a biography becomes an About page.

Everything together, on one text

For six lessons you learned one thing at a time: reading as a visitor, clearing noise out of a text, putting the main point first, writing for forms, holding a tone and staying within the law. Now we put it all together in one exercise: take a bad biography and turn it into an About page you can be proud of. In the practice the “Before” note builds the biography in its weakest form from the fields of your brief. And if you have a real one, put its data in the brief, and that is what you will edit.

The About page is one of the most-read pages on a site, and one of the worst written. The author is writing about themselves, afraid of boasting and of being dull, and two kinds of text result: “Welcome, my name is…” with a form-style CV, and “I am a top-class professional” with judgments. Neither works for the reader, who has come to find out whether this person can help them in particular, and whether they can be trusted.

A good About page answers two questions: “who are you and how are you useful to me?” and “how will I know you can be trusted?” Everything else, favorite color, childhood, hometown, stays only if it helps answer one of those two.

Five passes

It’s better to edit not “by inspiration” but in passes. In each you look at the text through one lens. That way nothing is forgotten, and the edits of one pass don’t get in the way of the others.

1. The point first (lesson 3). Find in the text whatever answers “who, what they do, how they’re useful” and put it in the first paragraph. Whatever came before it (“welcome”, “my name is”) goes or gets shorter.
2. Facts instead of judgments (lesson 2). Find the judgments (“highly qualified”, “wealth of experience”) and ask of each: what stands behind it? Replace it with years, documents, numbers. No fact: delete.
3. Structure (lesson 1). Break the text into subheadings, short paragraphs and lists. Name subheadings by their content. Put the proofs (documents, memberships) in a list.
4. Tone (lesson 5). Check whether the page sounds as the brief says and is in one voice with the whole site. “I’m always happy to help!” in a formal project sounds like a stranger’s voice.
5. What is allowed (lesson 6). Go through every statement: can it be checked? Does it sound like a guarantee or a superlative? Does it name clients? For an expert this is the strictest pass.

See how it looks in an example with the invented Kate Alder. Drag the slider: at each step the text changes, and below are the number of words and the number of words marked by the noise dictionary. Notice that the words don’t necessarily get fewer, they become different.

What stays and what goes

The hardest thing in editing is deciding what to cross out. One question helps: does this work toward the answer to “who are you and can you be trusted”?

• Greetings and thank-yous. Go. The reader already knows where they are.
• A tale of childhood. Goes, unless it explains why you work as you do. Sometimes it does (“I loved maps as a child, and today I measure boundaries”), and then one sentence stays.
• Education and length of practice. Stay as facts with years. “I studied land surveying and graduated in 2006” works; “I have a higher education” doesn’t.
• Hobbies and interests. The project decides. For a coffee shop, a photographer, a club, the personal is the trust. For an expert in land disputes it usually adds nothing.
• Awards and thanks. Stay if they can be checked: the name, the year, who gave it.
• Judgments with nothing under them. Go. With something under them they become facts.
• Promises and “never let anyone down”. Go. In their place you can honestly write what you don’t promise.

The last item is unexpected, but it does the most for trust. A section “What I don’t promise” (or “What the result depends on”) tells the reader: this is a person who knows their limits. For an expert and a lawyer it is also protection: you haven’t raised expectations you can’t meet.

The call, and the before-and-after pair

An About page doesn’t finish the job, it leads up to it. If a person has read that you suit them, the action button should be close: no later than after three paragraphs. Otherwise they finish reading, think “good”, and close the tab. Don’t hide the button at the very end, and don’t repeat it after every paragraph: an early call and one more at the end, if the page is long, are enough.

And keep the before-and-after pair with a note on what changed and why. It isn’t decoration. The note turns an edit from a matter of taste into a matter of argument: “took out the judgment because it can’t be checked; added a document because it can”. In six months you won’t remember why the text is built as it is. And the pair will be useful in later parts: in the lessons on stories and on metrics you will compare versions of a text.

When you finish, your project will have: an informative first screen (lesson 1), a text without noise (lesson 2), an honest headline and description for search (lesson 3), clear microcopy for the form (lesson 4), a recorded voice (lesson 5), a draft notice and proofs with sources (lesson 6) and an About page that gathers it all (lesson 7). That is the base on which the copywriting formulas of the next part will rest.

Practice

The “Before” note holds your biography at its weakest. Rewrite it on the page #about in five passes.

1. The point first. In the paragraph lead, name yourself and say what you do and who you help.
2. Facts. Years, documents and length of practice instead of judgments.
3. Structure. At least three h2 subheadings; short paragraphs, each on its own line of the file; the proofs from the brief as a list.
4. Tone. The page must sound as the brief says, in your voice.
5. What is allowed. No guarantees, superlatives or empty judgments.

The link to the main action (an a with the class cta, in a paragraph of its own) comes no later than after three paragraphs. And in the note “What and why” write three changes and the reason for each.

The check looks at form: the first paragraph, the subheadings, the early link, the proofs as a list, and the absence of typical judgments and promises. Whether the page is good in substance is for you to decide. Read it aloud and ask yourself: would I believe it if I were a stranger from “for whom”?