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Professional Writing · Chapter 5

The Ten-Minute Revision Bench

Rereading confirms what you meant; revision tests what the document does. Here is a real request memo in the state most drafts are in at 4:50 on a Friday. Work the ten checks in order — judge each one first, then apply the fix and watch the sentence change. By the tenth check the persuasive skeleton has assembled itself, which is not a coincidence.
The draft
Highlighted in gold: whatever the check you are working on is pointing at. Green: what you have already repaired.
Problem, cost, options, ask. Most short documents that fail were not badly written — they simply never asked for anything specific. Name the problem in one measurable sentence, quantify the cost of leaving it alone, lay out two or three options including the do-nothing case, then make one ask with a decision date.
The rubric
Run these on a printed copy or a full-screen preview, never in the window where you wrote it — your eye has already memorised that view.
The twenty-four-hour rule has an exception. Sleeping on an angry document is excellent advice for tone and terrible advice for safety. If the content involves patient harm, a hazard or a legal deadline, send the factual report now and revise your feelings later — delay is itself a documented act.