Typos and mistakes seem inevitable. While you can delegate the proofreading job to someone else who’s an expert nitpicker, that’s not always practical when we’re all sending emails, blogging, and posting on social networks at real-time speed with little editing. But if you’re smart about how brains see (and don’t see) errors, you can catch more…
In my experience, a big challenge for writers is the inappropriate edit. You know, the guy who corrects spelling errors in your outline, or wants to rearrange the whole thing during the proofreading stage. In fact, only 32% of business writers say that their process for collecting and combining feedback works well. I’ve written before…
Like all writers, I have a fraught relationship with copy editors. I give them my perfect prose and then it’s pick, pick, pick. But I can’t live without one. Today: how to value copyeditors and your own prose, all at the same time. I’ve taken you through the whole editing process this week: idea development,…
I vastly enjoyed Between You and Me: Confessions of a Comma Queen, the memoir of New Yorker copyeditor Mary Norris. The pas de deux that the writer and editor dance together is lively and invigorating, because both want nothing more than for the writing to be perfect. But it’s a fraught affair, because your partner’s job is…
Editing is like going to the dentist — nobody likes it, but you’ll avoid a lot of pain and ugliness if you get the right help at the right time. And you need to pick the right intensity of editing to match what your writing needs; you can’t fix a toothache with just a cleaning. Good…