Editing and Proofreading

Editing

Good editing does not change your work — it enhances it.

Editing can assist with the organization, word choice, overall readability, and impact of your piece. It can elevate your writing to truly express your competence and professionalism.

Editing is what ensures that your arguments and ideas —the ones you spent a ton of time and energy developing and putting into words — are expressed in a clear and compelling way.

I put editing before proofreading here because when you are writing anything, editing comes first. Although editing includes proofreading, it is so much more than fixing grammatical errors.

Proofreading is what you do when the project is done and is ready to be finalized before you send it out into the word.

Editing develops your project.

It looks not only at what you are saying, but how you say it. Editing focuses on making your piece easier to understand, better organized, more expressive and more attractive to your target audience. It takes into consideration the content, consistency and presentation of your piece.

Having an editor who understands your field can be essential to the professionalism of your writing.

An editor who understands your field can understand and critique your work on a deeper level because she understands the subject matter.

Proofreading

 No matter how many times you read and re-read it, you’ll never catch all your mistakes. To establish your expertise, attract and keep clients, you need to make sure your writing is impeccable. Having your work proofread does that for you.

Don’t ever underestimate how important proofreading is. Without it, every mistake you make gives the impression that you are sloppy or incompetent.

For attorneys and law firms this can be especially devastating because it implies that you do not “pay attention to detail.”

While essential for all writers, proofreading can be especially effective for anyone who is not a strong writer or for whom English is a second language.

It is also critical if you want to advertise your services or business. Correct spelling, grammar and punctuation are key elements to creating an effective advertisement.

Could you just run your stuff through artificial intelligence tools like Grammarly?

Sure.

But keep in mind that it’s called “artificial intelligence” for a reason. Computer programs can’t read your paper with understanding. They don’t understand the context of what is being said. They don’t understand jargon or nuances in language. So they frequently give incorrect or asinine word replacement suggestions.

Which only makes your writing worse.

So, yes, you could use those things.

But if you really want to compete in the online environment (or even offline for that matter) you need to have impeccable content. If you publish a website, blog post, proposal, email or any other written content that is riddled with grammatical, spelling and punctuation errors, the impression you send to your readers is that you are just as careless and incompetent in your work as you are in your writing.

Professional proofreading protects you from poor perception and gives your writing the expert appearance you want.

Book Proofreading and Editing Services Now!

The single best thing you can to for your business is to have everything you write proofread and/or edited before you publish it. So before you hit that “send” button, click on the one below!