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No more unedited first drafts

Mandy Brown in Babies and the Bathwater, a great article for the first edition of Contents Magazine:

Something about the nature of digital content seems to give us permission to slack off editorially. Digital formats are routinely marked by slapdash editing and nonexistent proofreading””a sign of how little anyone cares. Many online publications rearrange content based on the needs of machines rather than people. As the web forces us to speed up our publishing process, editing is often the first thing to be thrown out.

This is one of my pet peeves as well. Publishing is cheap, but that doesn’t mean we don’t have to do it right. I like how Merlin Mann puts it in Better:

What worries me are the consequences of a diet comprised mostly of fake-connectedness, makebelieve insight, and unedited first drafts of everything.

Words continue to matter more and more. Let’s not forget to edit them.