Editing Your Own Writing: The Cut It in Half Rule

Why this matters

Most people who write for a living in the field, whether that is estimates, service reports, or customer emails, never edit what they write. The first draft goes out as the final draft, because there is no time and editing feels like a skill for professional writers, not for a tech typing a report between calls. But a first draft is almost always longer and vaguer than it needs to be, and the reader pays the price in confusion and wasted time. The cut-it-in-half rule is a five-minute editing pass that fits into a busy day and reliably makes writing clearer, not just shorter, because most of what gets cut was never carrying its weight.

Step 1: Write the draft without editing as you go

Get the whole thing down first, warts and all. Editing while drafting slows you down and produces stiffer writing, because you are second-guessing every sentence before the idea is even fully formed. Write it fast, then step back and edit as a separate pass.

Step 2: Read it once, out loud if possible

Before cutting anything, read the whole draft through once. Reading out loud, even under your breath, catches problems silent reading misses: sentences that run too long to say in one breath, phrases that sound stiff or unnatural, places where you clearly lost the thread. If a sentence makes you stumble reading it aloud, it will make the customer stumble reading it silently.

Step 3: Set a target of half the word count

This is the core of the method. Take your draft's word count and set a hard target of half that number. It sounds aggressive, and it is meant to, because most first drafts are padded with throat-clearing, repeated ideas, and qualifiers that add length without adding meaning. You will not always hit exactly half, but aiming for it forces you to find the real cuts instead of the easy ones.

Step 4: Cut in this order

Work through the draft in this priority order, cutting the easiest wins first:

1. Throat-clearing openers. Sentences that exist only to warm up before the real point: "I wanted to reach out to let you know that..." Cut straight to "The part arrived today."
2. Redundant restatement. Anywhere you say the same thing twice in different words, a habit that feels like emphasis but reads as padding. Keep the stronger of the two versions, cut the other.
3. Qualifiers that hedge without adding information. "Pretty much," "sort of," "in general," "as you may know." These soften a sentence without changing its meaning; if the sentence is true, state it plainly.
4. Explaining things the reader already knows. If you are writing to an existing customer, you do not need to re-explain who you are or re-describe the original problem in full, a brief reference is enough.
5. Anything that could be inferred from context. If a sentence's information is obvious from the sentence before or after it, it is not adding anything, cut it.

Step 5: Check what survived the cut

After cutting, reread what remains and check for two things. First, did you accidentally cut something the reader actually needs, a date, a number, a next step? Padding and information can sit close together in a sentence, and an aggressive cut sometimes takes both. Second, does what remains still sound like you, not like a telegram? The goal is tight, not terse to the point of sounding cold. A short sentence can still be warm; it just has no wasted words in it.

Step 6: Do the final read for tone, not length

Once the length is right, do one more pass specifically for tone. Cutting hard sometimes strips out the human warmth along with the padding, leaving something technically clear but cold. Add back a short phrase of warmth if the piece needs it ("thanks for your patience on this one" or "give us a call if anything doesn't look right"), even if it costs you a few of the words you just cut. Clarity is the primary goal, but a report or email that reads as curt undoes some of the trust the clarity was supposed to build.

A worked before-and-after

Before (62 words): "I just wanted to reach out and let you know that we went ahead and took a look at the water heater today, and after doing a pretty thorough inspection, it does appear that there might be an issue with the pressure relief valve, which is something that we would generally recommend replacing sooner rather than later for safety reasons."

After (28 words): "We inspected the water heater today. The pressure relief valve is failing and needs replacing soon, this is a safety item, not something to put off."

Less than half the length, and every fact from the original survives: what was done, what was found, what needs to happen, and why it matters. Nothing essential was lost, only the padding around it.

References

• Plain Language Action and Information Network (PlainLanguage.gov), concise writing guidance
• See related: The Bullet Point vs Paragraph Decision in a Report
• See related: The Jargon You Should Never Put in Writing