Why Proofreading and Editing are Essential Steps Toward Better Writing
Proofreading and editing lead to better writing.
Some of the greatest writers throughout history have said that writing is revising. That’s where the work is polished and fine tuned so that it shines and strikes a chord with readers. A piece of writing enters the proofreading and editing phase as a lump of coal and it comes out a diamond.
I’m a firm believer in the idea that every individual should do things his or her own way. Each of us has to find the genre that fits, the notebook that’s most comfortable, and the writing process that clicks. But there’s no alternative to proofreading and editing. It’s something we all have to do.
A rough draft is just that — rough. And when you put a rough piece of writing out there for people to read, it will feel to them like a piece of wood that hasn’t been sanded. It’s jagged, edgy (not in a good way), misshapen, and unpleasant to the touch.
Yet many writers continue to share, publish, and distribute their work before they’ve even given it a once-over. I don’t know if they think they got it right on the first pass, can’t be bothered with cleaning up their own mess, or simply don’t care about their work or their readers.
Proofreading and editing are essential steps in the writing process. Whatever your process is, proofreading and editing must be included because nobody gets it right on the first try (okay, maybe one in a million). Even when material has been revised, edited, and proofread several times, a typo or two can slip through. Just the other day I was reading an encyclopedia and right there on the second page was a glaring typo. I’d guess that encyclopedia was reviewed by the writers plus a team of editors and proofreaders. So just imagine how many mistakes are in a piece of your writing that hasn’t been edited or that you’ve only given a cursory proof.
For the Love of Creation
Creativity is a strange and wonderful phenomenon. Some of us are born to make things, and we do it because we love our work. We are passionate about poetry and fired up over fiction. Don’t we love our work enough to make it shine as brightly as possible? When I read work that hasn’t been polished, I get the sense that the writer is not really working. It’s all fun and games, sitting around coming up with rhymes and making up stories. But the craftsmanship, the work, is in the detail. It’s in the proofreading and editing. If all you want to do is have fun, go to a bar or a ballgame.
Professionalism
Nothing says “I’m unprofessional” like a rough draft that has been turned in, submitted, or otherwise shared or published. If there’s one reason I’m relieved I never became an editor at a magazine or newspaper, it’s that I don’t have to suffer through page after page of lazy, unpolished writing. This is why editors rarely offer feedback on why they reject so many submissions. They figure if the writers can’t take the time to polish their work, the editors shouldn’t waste their time doing anything more than sending a polite, canned rejection slip.
Better Feedback
Some young or new writers will wonder why they should belong to a writing group or participate in a workshop if they have to do all their own editing and find their own mistakes. When you clean up your work before getting feedback, the person who’s providing feedback will be able to provide you with a response that is more insightful. If you already know how to use quotation marks, contractions, and how to differentiate between passive and active voice, feedback that points these things out won’t make you a better writer. It’s just someone else telling you where to point your vacuum cleaner when you have a perfectly good set of eyes and can see the dirt for yourself. Your writing group and workshop should function more like a carpet cleaner. They go through and find the stuff you can’t see, the stuff you don’t know, not the stuff you were too lazy to look for.
Know Your Trade
Occasionally, I come across a writer who doesn’t like editing and would prefer to pay someone else to do it. These writers usually have the greatest trouble with grammar and mechanics, and they don’t want to learn. They just want someone else to fix it. I’m happy to help, but I’m always left wondering why a writer wouldn’t want to know the tools of his or her trade. That’s kind of like a plumber who doesn’t know the difference between a wrench and screwdriver.
Respecting Your Readers
Readers, however, are the most important reasons why every writer should proofread and edit. By readers, I don’t simply mean the folks who buy books and magazines. Readers are also your teachers, members of your workshop or writing group, and even your friends and family. It’s almost a matter of etiquette — it’s disrespectful to ask someone to read your sloppy rough draft or a project you’ve only reviewed once or twice. If you don’t take time to polish your writing, why should anyone make time to read it?
Proofreading and Editing Are Essential to Better Writing
For all of these reasons (and I’m sure, many more), proofreading and editing are essential to producing writing that is polished, professional, and publishable. When you proof and edit your own work, typos will still slip through. I’ve heard several authors talk about reading their own published work years later and finding all kinds of problems that they wish they’d caught before it went to print. And they had high-level, professional editors!
Most of us don’t have a team of experts. We’re all busy. We all make mistakes. But if we can’t make time to do our best, then why bother writing at all?
Can you think of any other reasons why proofreading and editing are so important? What other actions lead to better writing? Share your thoughts by leaving a comment.
Melissa Donovan is a website designer and copywriter. She writes fiction and poetry and is the founder and editor of Writing Forward, a blog packed with creative writing tips and ideas.
Although I have never been an editor by trade, I did work as a TA in university. I had to go through over a hundred undergrad essays each term, and I can bet that only about 20% of them were edited. By the end of that marking period, I knew I could never get into editing professionally – too many jumbled sentences that I could make heads or tails of, grammar mistakes that shouldn’t be there, and yes, even spelling mistakes that got past Word.
You’ve got some great reasons why editing is so important. And it’s important not just in the fiction or non-fiction writing you do, but even the emails you send out, the comments you write (here’s hoping I haven’t made a glaring error somewhere in here) and the social media updates you do. As writers, especially, our professionalism and dedication to our trade is visible in every piece of text we produce, so the least we can do is edit before publishing.
Well said, Lauren! Thanks for sharing your experience. I find it fascinating (albeit not surprising) that you found only about 20% of the papers you reviewed had actually been edited. That’s a little disheartening.
This is wonderful! (And well polished, I might add.) May I make copies to hand out in the high school Language Arts classes that I teach? I love the part about editing being a matter of etiquette. I agree wholeheartedly!!
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It is important to edit before getting feedbacks. Otherwise there might be a bunch of mistakes or potentially confusing things that really distracts the reader from the story or message. Or they might feel like there are so many mistakes that they don’t even know where to start!
I couldn’t agree more, Kelvin! Also, if writers don’t edit before getting feedback, the feedback itself may end up addressing problems and mistakes that the writer already knows how to fix, rendering the feedback moot because the writer can’t learn anything new from it.
I am an author and when I first began my literary journey I was just a poet. One day I decided to expand my horizons and I wrote my first novel. It took 5 edited copies for me to get it right but, I am thrilled with the results that came out of my hard work because I took my time with it. In many cases I think that many authors take the lazy route because there are so many programs, people ans resources that may help them. In my case I do not have an editor available to me with out a fee and since I am not working at this time is hard for me to afford any help but when I do obtain my first editor I will make sure that their jobs are easier because as a self-published author I know how hard it is to publish a book that looks like it was edited by someone. Yes, editors are of great help but at the end I believe that an author should take pride on their work and try to do everything themselves. I am taking some literature classes that I feel will help but, then again I will love to have an editor.
All writers will benefit from working with an editor, or at the very least, some well chosen beta readers. For writers who are on a tight budget but really want professional feedback on a novel or book-length manuscript, I often suggest getting a professional edit or critique on the first chapter. You can then use the feedback and apply it to the rest of the material. This also strengthens the first chapter, which is what you’ll initially send to a prospective agent (if you’re going the agent route). Good luck to you!
Oh, how true, how true! I had two writer’s groups, two editors, and still a reader emailed me two weeks after the release my novel to inform me of a missing word in a sentence! Though he did say it was the only error he noticed, thank goodness. Things may slip through – it’s almost inevitable. However, that doesn’t mean you slough off the effort to make it as good as you possibly can.
I know one author who wanted to hire an editor. Said editor requested the first ten pages and then politely declined the project because the manuscript was “not ready for editing.”
Though it won’t guarantee you won’t be rejected, proofing and editing through multiple drafts before submitting shows an editor, agent, or publisher you’re serious about the piece.
One error isn’t bad at all! I’ve caught more errors than that in articles and books that have gone through teams of editors and proofreaders! I have turned down editing project when the text was so full of mistakes and poor grammar that I determined the material wasn’t ready to be professionally edited. I think some writers think they can have a rough draft edited, and maybe some editors do take on rough projects; however, most editors and publishers won’t work through multiple drafts. Their purpose is to polish, not deep clean.
I see I’m not the only one that has noticed the overwhelming amount of typo’s and odd grammar anymore. I’ve seen them in news blogs and even in the little scroll at the bottom of news channels on t.v. I’ve begun to wonder if people have become lazy or just to reliant on spell check. A spell check that is often wrong. The really strange thing is I’ve notice them in books lately too. An extra word here, a missing word there…
Nice post, it’s good to see some people still care how the written word appears.
I agree: typos abound.
I wonder that in such an age where the demand for information is insatiable (or force-fed?), the focus is getting the content out there as quickly as possible is made the focus while editing is sacrificed. It’s quantity before quality in this consumer-driven society of ours and that leads to an attitude of apathy and laziness toward producing the best stuff as opposed to producing the most stuff. And to be fair, authors and editors are human after all, none perfect.
Yes, the drive to produce as much content as possible is certainly a contributing factor to the lack of pristine editing. Also, with publishing so accessible these days (anyone can publish their work easily), I think a lot of folks who are not necessarily writers have entered the fray. Many of them are professionals or hobbyists sharing their expertise, so their primary function is to share information. In other words, they are not writers first.