To revise, or not to revise?

Stop me if you’ve heard this one before.  You’re happily digging through your blog archives, only to stumble upon that one embarrassing post from six months ago.  Your cursor hovers over the “Edit” button for a moment.

In hindsight, many of our posts might be mildly twinge-inducing, maybe even downright negligent, and some can really feel like they need revision.  This happens to me a lot as a food blogger; I’ll never forgive myself for confusing the words “stock” and “broth” for several years (some readers won’t, either).  So what’s a writer to do: dive in with a scalpel, or leave it be for posterity’s sake?

Personally, I’ve always gone back and revised my recipe posts; after all, I’m learning new things about cooking every day, and I want to make sure my readers are making the best possible version of the dish on my website.  A happy eater is a future reader!  I’ll often add a blurb indicating that I’ve updated the recipe.

How do you handle post revisions?

Russ Crandall is the author/chef behind popular blog The Domestic Man. Russ will speak at Press Publish Phoenix about how he found his niche in the wide world of food blogging and how his focused approach created unexpected opportunities.

Comments

  1. I fix grammatical/spelling errors (I can’t stand them), but if I feel moved to correct actual facts, I’ll put a little “Editor’s Note” in, using the Blockquote tool, so that people can see what’s changed.

    I’m really glad to hear that you correct recipes, though, Russ. I’d be super-disappointed if a food blogger knew he/she called for too much vinegar in a recipe 6 months ago and then just let it stand, thereby ruining my dinner! That said, I’m not a huge recipe-follower anyway.

    2. I do the same thing. Happy to fix spelling mistakes but I hesitate to make any substantial changes. I will usually do “EDIT: Blah blah blah” or something, possibly even writing a new post and linking to the new one from the old one.

  2. Pingback: To revise, or not to revise? | The WordPress C(h)ronicle

    1. When going through a redesign, I actually removed a few posts altogether. But I couldn’t stand to see them leave forever, so I switched them to “Pending Review” status so that I can still get a chuckle from time to time!

  4. I *wish* I had the time to go back and revise. I write a decent amount about my memories, and occasionally I’ll uncover a detail pertaining to some incident I’ve written about that I’ll want to go back and include. Alas, there aren’t 26 hours in a day. Hopefully when my kid is grown and I’ve retired (LOL) I’ll be able to go back and edit the way I want.

  6. I write specialty movie reviews. They are published in final form.
    Revisions and editing are completed before publication.
    Always open to a needed revision.

    Once upgraded the site with many screenshots. Many older reviews were heavily reconstructed, to match the site. Looks fantastic, but what a bunch of work!

    1. I agree, the drudgery of reconstruction is just about the worst part of a blogger’s life! Sometimes I think I’ll hire someone on Fiverr.com to do it, but I’m such a stickler for being the only one who touches my content that in the end I always balk and do it myself 🙂

  7. My blog has been around so long that I cringe when I think of some of the posts I’ve written while lying to myself and having the very best of intentions and hope for the future. I ignore ignore ignore to keep myself from deleting or altering. But when I catch typos and spelling errors I don’t hesitate for a moment. After all, it’s not print.

    1. I think that “what was I thinking” phenomenon with older posts is kind of amazing. Everyone says they pity kids growing up these days, with all their juvenile mistakes documented for all to see, but I think that being able to take people for who they are, when you *also* know who they have been in the past, is a huge advancement in compassion and civility. If we can all pull it off, that is. 🙂

  8. I don’t generally go back and edit my posts except for major errors. I feel that having the old posts around gives you an idea of how far you’ve come. It’s like sore muscles for the brain.

    That being said, I was tasked by my mother with “writing something every day” while I was in college because I was not good at communicating a thought linearly. So for me, my writing was meant to fix poor communication. It makes total sense that I should leave them as they are!

  9. If I happen to find a typo on older posts, I’ll go in and fix. If something has changed that might affect a reader’s understanding of the post, I’ll do something similar to Andrea and write a short italicized note at the top, marked with the date.

    When it comes to pretty much all the blog posts from 7-8 years ago that make me cringe — primarily the travel guide-like posts I used to write when I’d started my blog — I’ve gone back and forth about what to do. A few years ago, I deleted a bunch of posts that just didn’t make sense to keep, yet I’ve kept some others not just because they do bring me a lot of random traffic via search, but because leaving bits and traces of my past self is important. I’d like some sort of record of my evolution as a writer.

    Nice question — I often think about what, in our online lives, we choose to revise or delete entirely.

  10. If it’s a small error, I’ll fix it. If it’s more about syntax/rhythm or an idea I simply could’ve fleshed out more, I’ll leave it, for posterity’s sake, to see how far I’ve come.

  11. As an editor, I (Gayle) find it almost impossible to pass up an opportunity to correct something I find is an error. If I find a grammatical error in a comment made to our blog, I do a quick edit before approving it. And I certainly DO correct any errors I find that I’ve made in past blogs. One thing I find rather perplexing is in quoting local newspaper interviews that have been made about new books my husband and I have published. We are very grateful for the willingness of the newspaper writers to help publicize our books and the genuinely excellent write-ups they have done. However, invariably there have been one or more factual errors in each of the write-ups. In my previous job as a magazine editor, I made a number of editorial changes to submitted articles but always ran them back through the writer or the person I had interviewed before publishing the piece. Usually the person was pleased with the changes or, if there was some factual information that was wrong, they would give me feedback and I would make the changes before publication. That doesn’t seem to be the case with the newspaper articles I’ve had written about me or about a situation I am aware of. The biggest problem I find in the case of interviews, is the common practice of the writer making up direct quotations from a subject, when that person never said anything of the sort.

  12. (Sorry, I accidentally clicked on “post” before I was done with my previous post.) It is advantageous to reprint the newspaper article on our website blog or on Facebook. However, when the article has some factual errors, I have used the tactic of copying the article and then posting it on our sites, citing the source but including the caveat that the reprint has been corrected by me for accuracy. I then make the correction by leaving an ellipsis where I have deleted an incorrect phrase or word and/or add the appropriate word or words enclosed within brackets.

  13. (Sorry, I accidentally clicked on “post” before I was done with my previous post.) It is advantageous to reprint the newspaper article on our website blog or on Facebook. However, when the article has some factual errors, I have used the tactic of copying the article and then posting it on our sites, citing the source but including the caveat that the reprint has been corrected by me for accuracy. I then make the correction by leaving an ellipsis where I have deleted an incorrect phrase or word and/or add the appropriate word or words enclosed within brackets.

  15. Great question! I used to be a freelance copyeditor/proofreader, so if I see a mistake, I’ll correct. If I want to reblog/”re-purpose” an older post, sometimes I will do some small edits. My biggest issue has been when I’ve posted an image from the web (giving due credit) and the image disappears. Then I have to create/find a new image. I try to take my own photos so that doesn’t happen.

  16. Good morning Russ! I have to confess that I very seldom read old posts and other than typo’s (which are a given) I can change nothing. I post daily about small farm life, in a slice of life kind of way, sometimes emotional, sometimes just documentative and always truthful – I have to trust that the decisions of that day (including what I write of them) were determined by the experiences of that day – so to change them would threaten their integrity. Gosh that sounds pompous doesn’t it? Maybe I mean that if that day was ugly, then an ugly post is ok and my readers will ‘get’ that it was ugly and we move on. Of course, this is very different from your beautiful work with food. An instructional post has to be correct. That is tied up with your integrity. Your blog is lovely by the way.. cecilia

    1. Hi Cecilia, thanks for the comment! You’re right that my perspective is a little different, since the quality of my recipes is important, regardless of when the post was first written. After all, I get readers that stumble upon dishes from all stages of my journey, and if they see something terrible I wrote a few years back, they might not be inclined to check out my recent work!

Comments are closed.