Editing Part III: Tips On Editing Your Own Work

Guest Blogger Sharon Sutinen, Editor and Owner of Vital Virtual Services shares her expertise with us in her third post in the series about editing. Enjoy!

Editing Part III: Tips On Editing Your Own Work
If you cannot afford to hire a good editor, then you need to put forth the time and effort to go through your own work more than once. Here are some tips to help you spot some common problems:

• SPELLCHECK your work! While it is true that a spellchecker cannot catch all errors and will miss quite a few, too, it will still catch some.
• Do not assume all the corrections that the spellchecker is suggesting are correct. Sometimes they don’t have it right.
• Read it out loud. Often just hearing the words will help you pinpoint poor sentence structure and misspellings.
• Print it out and read it to a child or baby as if it is a bedtime story. This helps take the material out of context and less “comfortable” for you, allowing your brain less ability to “fill in” what isn’t there.
  
• Wait at least a day after writing your material to reread it.
  

In addition, you should invest in a good dictionary, a good thesaurus, and an English Grammar book. One of my favorites is The Little, Brown Handbook" by Fowler. It is very easy to look up grammar rules and they always give very relevant examples so you can figure out what’s best. Keep these reference books handy and don’t be afraid to consult with them.

Thanks for reading, good luck and happy writing!