The Copy Edit Checklist: A Second Pass That Earns

Edit in a fixed order, with a checklist, after a break from drafting. First the job: can the page purpose be stated in one line, and does everything on the page serve it? Then the headline and first screen, the benefit and proof pairing, the objections, and the action wording. Then the craft passes: clarity, sentence length, reading aloud. Then the integrity passes: every number sourced, every claim supportable, every term consistent with the rest of the site and with the policies it quotes. Finish with a fresh reader performing the stranger test. Record what changed and why. A checklist sounds uncreative. It is what makes the creative work survive contact with a real page.

Write the page job in one line at the top of your editing notes. Read only the headline, subhead and first screen, on a phone if the page will mostly be read there. Can you state the offer, the audience and the next step? Does the first screen contain the terms a reader needs to judge the offer, or are they postponed for effect? Cut or move anything in the first screen that serves a different job, including a beloved story paragraph and a secondary campaign. This check is the checklist form of headlines across the site and of the one-job rule, and it finds more faults per minute than any later pass.

List the page claims in order and mark the proof beside each: feature, specification, evidence, or nothing. Claims with nothing get proof added or wording softened to what can be supported, following benefits and features. Then list the top objections for this page from the sources in objection handling and find each answer on the page, at the point of doubt, in words that match the policy or process behind it. An answer that contradicts a policy page is a fault in one of the two places; decide which, and fix both to the truth.

Read every action label and ask whether a stranger could predict the next screen, applying the standard from calls to action. Follow each main action one step and confirm the next page keeps the promise in the same terms. Then run the clarity pass: customer words in place of internal terms, one point per sentence on the key lines, the whole page read aloud once at speaking pace, with stumbles marked and fixed. Check the scanning path too: subheads alone should still deliver the argument. If time is short, these two checks and the claims check are the irreducible three.

Highlight every number, comparison, deadline, stock or capacity statement and superlative on the page. For each, name the source and the date it was verified, using the discipline in numbers in copy and the urgency rules in scarcity and urgency language. Then check consistency across the surfaces a reader might compare: this page, the category or service listing, the cart or booking summary, and any email that quotes the same offer. Disagreement between surfaces is read as carelessness at best. Remove any claim whose source cannot be named in the edit session; it can return when its evidence does.

Give the edited page to one person who did not write it and does not work in the business, on the device most readers will use. Ask them to say aloud what is offered, who it is for, what it costs in total, what happens if it is wrong, and what the main action does. Note every hesitation and every paraphrase that differs from what the page intends. Those notes outrank the editor opinion, including yours. Fix the faults they reveal, and where a fault reflects a genuine policy weakness rather than a wording weakness, record it as an operational item instead of papering over it with better sentences.

Log the edit with the page, the date, the checks run, the main changes and the reason for each, in the same change log the site work uses. Over months, the log shows which checks keep finding faults, which is information about your drafting habits: if the claims check fails repeatedly, the drafting brief needs a claims step; if first screens keep failing, templates may be at fault rather than writers. Revise the checklist itself once a year from that evidence. A checklist that learns is a small quality system for copy, and it is the fitting end to this cluster: the words improve because the process for improving them is written down.