Substantive editing sample 19:
Disaster tourists

Sometimes clarity demands some inserted text—in this case, repeating some text to emphasize an additional reason for the traffic being clogged on the highway after a disastrous explosion on a bridge.

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Original
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When the path behind me was clear, I backed up a few hundred feet and turned onto a side road, then pulled out and got back on Highway 35 headed toward La Crosse. I was going to need a drink. Or three. The drive felt unbearably slow, and I didn’t have any patience left in my tank. I was surprised by how quickly the disaster tourists had flooded the road. Sure, some of the traffic was from cars that now had to detour to La Crosse for the nearest river bridge, but there wouldn’t normally have been that much traffic on Highway 35 that time of night.

Markup
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When the path behind me was clear, I backed up a few hundred feet and turned onto a side road, then pulled out and got back on Highway 35 headed 35, headed toward La Crosse. I was going to need a drink. Or three. The drive felt unbearably slow, and I didn’t have any patience left in my tank. I was surprised by how quickly the disaster tourists had flooded the road. Sure, some of the traffic was from cars that now had to detour to La Crosse for the nearest river bridge, but there wouldn’t normally have been that much traffic on Highway 35 that time of night. of night—even accounting for the detouring cars. [Inserted text “even accounting for the detouring cars” okay? The sentence’s first clause acknowledges the detouring cars, but the original second clause offers only the time of night as a reason traffic should not be heavy. The inserted text discounts the fact of the detouring cars as enough reason for the heavy traffic. (The traffic was additionally clogged by the “disaster tourists,” who wanted to gawk at the aftermath of the Winona bridge’s explosion.)]

Result
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When the path behind me was clear, I backed up a few hundred feet and turned onto a side road, then pulled out and got back on Highway 35, headed toward La Crosse. I was going to need a drink. Or three. The drive felt unbearably slow, and I didn’t have any patience left in my tank. I was surprised by how quickly the disaster tourists had flooded the road. Sure, some of the traffic was from cars that now had to detour to La Crosse for the nearest river bridge, but there wouldn’t normally have been that much traffic on Highway 35 that time of night—even accounting for the detouring cars.