Looking back, it was karma for my smugness.
Two days before the deadline, I handed in one bound copy of my MA dissertation. I returned to my room and with a purr of satisfaction opened the other… only to spy, on the title page, the word ‘and’ spelled with a central M.
It’s been unopened in a drawer ever since.
If that was the first time I truly recognised the value of a third-party editor or proofreader, there have been plenty since.
Adopting good practice
Of course, as a professional copywriter, I’ve adopted good practices to try to avoid the snow-blindness that inevitably affects your judgement as you hit the final full stop.
In the early days, that meant following the example of my agency boss by printing out the copy and heading to the balcony to calmly read it through with a cigarette. The flaw in his approach was that his dad – a frequent visitor to the office – still didn’t know he smoked. Cue a frantic flapping of papers and stamping of feet when a certain car drove in.
Branching out on my own led to different methods: using the in-built ‘SPaG’* checker in Word; introducing a delay policy that means wherever possible I send copy over the morning after I’ve finished writing it; running text through an artificial intelligence tool online.
All valuable, but none foolproof.
Perhaps more importantly still, none offer the additional benefits that come from working with a trusted editor.
*With a hat-tip to the editor who introduced me to this term. If you’re not sure what it means, ask your editor!
The benefits of working with editors
As a writer, it’s part of your job to get into a subject, often drawing on the input of evangelistic sales and product teams as you build your knowledge. The rewards of that are that they recognise their words, leading to faster approval. But there’s also a risk of falling for the client spin and losing perspective.
An insightful editor can spot when you’ve done so, where the tone varies or the meaning becomes convoluted.
On the other hand, an editor with a deep knowledge of the client, and its tone of voice and approach, can help the writer avoid beartraps like unwittingly dropping in the marketing director’s most hated neologism or committing a stylistic faux pas.
Perhaps most of all, editors are great readers, not just proofreaders. They can offer an experienced and valuable opinion on whether your copy works.
Is it delivering the message you’re tasked with communicating? Is it achieving the impact you want?
On more occasions than I can remember, the timely input of an editor has helped sharpen up content before submission, remove the unnecessary sentence or paragraph and pinpoint the section that needs another look.
Of course, to answer these sorts of questions, you need to talk with the editors before you hand over the copy and let them know your concerns. It’s using the editor as an ally throughout, not just as a proofreader at the end.
In my experience, doing so doesn’t just result in more accurate copy. It produces much better copy – and a far more rewarding working experience.
