s4h-writing-line-editing

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# Writing: Line Editing

Line editing addresses mechanical failures at the sentence level — the problems that make competent writing feel clunky, slow, or airless. These are distinct from prose quality problems (which `/s4h-writing-prose-elevation` addresses): line editing is about removing what is broken, not elevating what is merely flat.

Five failures account for the majority of sentence-level problems:

**Redundancy:** Saying the same thing twice, either in the same sentence or in adjacent sentences. Often invisible to the writer because the repetition feels like emphasis or clarity.

**Nominalisation (zombie nouns):** Converting verbs and adjectives into noun forms, burying the action inside the noun. "Made a decision" instead of "decided." "Had a realisation" instead of "realised." "Conducted an investigation" instead of "investigated." Every nominalisation costs one verb, reduces clarity, and adds bureaucratic weight.

**Agency-obscuring passive voice:** Not all passive voice is wrong — "Mistakes were made" is passive, but sometimes the subject genuinely isn't known or relevant. The problem is passive voice that obscures *who did what*, when the agent matters: "The decision was made to cut the programme" when the sentence needs to say who cut it.

**Rhythmic monotony:** All sentences the same length. All sentences starting the same way. A page that reads like a manual because every sentence is a main clause, subject-verb-object, approximately fifteen words, followed by another exactly like it. Rhythm variation creates pace, emphasis, and the sense of a living mind behind the prose.