How Inception Helps Me Edit Papers
When I am writing a paper that has a page limit I use the first draft to make sure that I have a complete thought, I do not worry about exceeding the page limit.
For the first round of editing I read through the entire paper once. I then reread the paper section by section.
I open a new document for sections which I want to edit and conduct all of my editing in the new window so that I can preserve the original thought while I carve up its copy.
During that new window editing, I will then take paragraphs from the section and open new windows for each of them before using the cut copy paste “kick” to move it back through the layers of the document.
When I make it back to the original layer, what I am left with is a concise, coherent, and consistent paper. In a way, for each paragraph I have gone three layers deep to plant my idea.
Google Docs should design this feature that you describe: Nested Editing Mode.
They also need a feature that lets you highlight sections with different colored highlighters and then view all the “green” highlighted text at once in its own window and all the “yellow” highlighted text in another window all its own…You get the idea.