What does an editor do?

Basically, we prepare an author's work for publication. Sounds quite simple really, but it’s more like Doctor Who’s Tardis: there’s way more going on inside than meets the eye! A lot of people think that by reading over their own manuscript and tweaking the odd thing here and there, that they have done an edit. My guess is that because you have found your way to my editing Web site, you are not one of those people! But why do you need an editor? Purely because editors can see the wood for the trees in your manuscript!

Whether you’ve written an article, academic paper, children’s book, short story, non-fiction book, or the best fictional work ever written (or nearly!) every author is very close to their own personal creation. This means that when you read over it (and over it and over it and over it again...) you see what you want to see – what you expect to see – not what is actually there. This applies to many aspects of your written masterpiece; for example:

Spelling: Spell checks on your pc or Mac only pick up words that are spelled incorrectly, but what if the correctly spelled, but wrong version of a word is used? For example, your/you’re; their/there/they’re.

Names: Believe it or not, authors of fiction often choose the same first or last name more than once for completely unrelated characters.

Sequence of ideas: Timelines and flow of information are very important in many different types of manuscripts and often get mixed up.

Consistency of style: This can be a difficult one for even the most experienced author to maintain. Different language styles (e.g. USA, Britain) often become mixed. Language tense is a doozey one as well: present, past and future tenses frequently dance together when they should be performing solo.

Etc: This one covers a multitude of ‘authored’ sins, but I think you get the general drift from the examples above.

For more details on what my editing covers, check out ‘My Services’ page.