Have you ever written something, only to see an error after it has been published online — or worse, in print? I’m betting that has happened to everyone at least once — a quickly written paper for school, a magazine article with a strict deadline so you only used spell check, or perhaps a blog post where you used both present tense and past tense interchangeably. While you can easily fix these things in online environment, you miss the chance to make a great first impression if it’s not corrected before publishing. And once an error is in print, it’s there for (seemingly) an eternity.
Don’t make your reader work too hard
Suppose you were reading an educational book or article and came across the following paragraph:
“The Herald of Free Enterprise disaster is often referred to as one of the worse worst tragedies of its time.. From On the face of it all, the tragedy appears to have been a case ofcaused by the negligence by of officials working on the vessel. ; Howeverhowever, the cardinal faults laid lay higher up in the company, . social Social issues such as ignorance towards adopting a safety culture, not adhering to standards and proceedures, and unclear definition of roles and responsbilities responsibilities were all faults contributing towards the deaths of the 193 passengers.”1
How would you react? Would you work hard to discern what the author is trying to convey, or would you chuck it and move on? How credible would you find the organization that allowed it to be published? Would you even go online to complain about the lack of care for an organization’s work if it approves of THIS representation?
This emphasizes the importance of proofreading and editing. When attaching your name or your company’s name to a piece of writing, striving for perfection is essential. While humans are prone to making occasional mistakes, ensuring your work is of the highest quality is crucial to being taken seriously.
In case you’re curious, the updated version of that paragraph is below:
“The Herald of Free Enterprise disaster is often referred to as one of the worst tragedies of its time. On the face of it, the tragedy may have been caused by the negligence of officials working on the vessel; however, the cardinal faults lay higher up in the company. Social issues such as ignorance toward adopting a safety culture, not adhering to standards and procedures, and unclear definition of roles, were all faults contributing to the deaths of 193 passengers.”
That is a much easier read and makes more sense, doesn’t it?
What’s the difference between editing and proofreading?
We often use proofreading and editing interchangeably, but they represent different stages of finalizing written documents.
Editing: Editors sometimes require knowledge about the topic in a piece of writing, but not always. They may need specific expertise when editing articles about medicine, law, and certain technical topics, while for other subjects, general knowledge suffices. Editors enhance content by improving its structure, flow, and clarity, organizing ideas, and strengthening arguments to ensure the message is effective and persuasive.
Proofreading: Proofreaders focus on mechanical errors that editors may have overlooked. They don’t need expertise in the subject matter but concentrate on the writing itself: identifying spelling, grammar, punctuation, capitalization, and formatting issues.
Writing without revising is the literary equivalent of waltzing gaily out of the house in your underwear.
Editing: Polishing your content
Not all editors perform identical tasks. Some assess the readability and clarity of your writing, while others concentrate on your arguments and sources. There are two main types of editors:
Structural and developmental editors: These editors analyze the broader aspects and delve deeply into your content. They evaluate flow and style, ensuring you have sufficient evidence to support your claims. They verify the credibility of your sources and may offer academic writing tips to enhance quality. Additionally, they may assess the tone of your writing to ensure it aligns with any company style guidelines.
Line and copy editors: Copy editors check for sentence structure, grammar, and word choice, ensuring your writing is coherent, accurate, and readable.
Some of the most common mistakes editors fix include:
- Poor sentence structure: using too much passive voice, sentence length, repeated sentence starts
- Insufficient evidence supporting your argument or thesis
- Non-credible resources, such as very biased news sources or Wikipedia
- Commonly confused words: homophones (words that are spelled differently but sound the same) such as “compliment” and “complement” are problematic and typically not flagged by spellcheck tools
“Muphry’s Law: “If you write anything criticising editing or proofreading, there will be a fault of some kind in what you have written.”
Proofreading: Ensuring accuracy and correctness
Proper proofreading and editing enhance your readers’ comprehension of your writing. Remember, this focuses on mechanics, not substance. Proofreaders excel at catching misspellings, pronoun references, run-on sentences, excessive or insufficient comma usage, and parallelism (see: Veni, Vidi, Vici: Parallelism). They ask themselves questions like:
- Are lists consistent and adhering to a style guide, if utilized? Do they all conclude with periods or lack ending punctuation?
- Is comma usage uniform throughout? Is the Oxford comma consistently applied (or not)?
- Do headers and subheaders maintain a consistent style, including boldness, size, and indentation?
- Were apostrophes used incorrectly? Are plurals employed accurately?
- Is the spacing between sentences correct? While many were taught to add two spaces after a period, the preferred spacing is now one space.
- Are there any capitalization errors? Does the style conform to the prescribed stylebook?
Depending on the quality of the writing, a proofreader may choose to review a piece more than once, especially if it presents unusual challenges.
The value of professional proofreading and editing services
Few people have the time, skills, or tools to ensure that every word, sentence, and paragraph is perfect. We know business communication needs to be clear, accurate, and engaging, but we often proofread our own work and then release it. If we’re lucky, a colleague can help proof and edit, but do they know all the ins and outs of the process? For instance, are they assuming the phone number and address at the bottom are correct, for instance, instead of reading everything?
One time, my personal phone number was published on a promotional product that ended up in almost every sheet music and CD store in the U.S. It was missed in several rounds of proofing because everyone who reviewed it (including me) assumed the phone number was correct. If I hadn’t found a way to fix it without reprinting it, I’d still be fielding phone calls over 20 years later. Lesson learned!
We are simply too close to our own writing to be our own possible editors and proofers. We definitely should look over our writing before sending it to editors, but we know what we want it to say so that’s how we tend to read it. Our colleagues often have a lot on their plate and looking over your writing isn’t the first thing on their mind. They do their best, but it’s not what they were hired for – unless specifically stated in their job descriptions. Let’s face it – proofreading and editing are tedious and time-consuming tasks.
Unless you have a reliable and accurate quality control system in place, consider hiring a professional proofreader and/or editor to help you perfect your content. They will take this work off your hands, allowing fresh eyes to read every word and catch every errant comma, while you can move on to other projects. Professionals worth their salt not only help ensure your writing is error-free, but they can also adapt your company’s tone, style, and vocabulary to your target audience.
Use feedback to improve your future writing
Hiring a professional can help you grow as a writer, providing insight into your strengths and weaknesses so you can improve your skills and technique. They can also answer your questions, give advice, and offer guidance on specific challenges. Make sure you see all the changes suggested by your editors and proofers so that you don’t end up publishing something that was flagged.
I’ll tell you another story of a very tired college newspaper staff finalizing the weekly newspaper for the printer. It was about 3:00 a.m. and our wonderful proofreader was helping us with final edits. We missed one of her corrections, and it made a big difference in a headline: There’s a big difference between “The Earth Society helped injured squirrels this weekend,” and “The Earth Society injured squirrels this weekend.” Obviously, we printed a retraction the following week, but the Earth Society was not thrilled with us.
Final thoughts
Going through the proofing and editing processes can sometimes be frustrating for the writer. Keep an open mind. It works best if you turn it into an opportunity to improve your writing by applying your editors’ suggestions in future writing. Editors and proofreaders are there to help you write to the best of your abilities and ensure your readers understand you. They might even help you change a few minds.
Do you need to hire a professional writer, editor, or proofreader? MATC Group can help! Contact us today!
Related Blogs
Checklist for Self-Editors: Beyond the Basics
What Quality Metrics Matter in Technial Writing
Resources
1Copy Editing Sample. https://www.freeindex.co.uk/media/listingpics/472/247/copyeditingsample.pdf
