Do Writers Make Good Editors?

I was reading another profile on Guru, and this person said they were an excellent editor because they had written so many articles that were published. This doesn't make sense. If writers were such good editors, there would not be editors for every traditional publishing company and magazine and pretty much anything in print.

As a writer, if you submit a work that is riddled with the errors that many people make, your manuscript will be rejected. An occasional misspelled word here and there will be overlooked as well as will more intense grammar points- did you use a comma splice, oh well.

Capitals at the beginning of a sentence and punctuation at the end of sentences will not be tolerated. As an adult you should know better. If you consistently misuse to and too, that will probably get you rejected as well. But editors overlook a lot because they know the nuances of grammar escape the general public. If you are a really good story writer, they can fix those problems. Writers are not expected to know style manuals, but it is hoped the writer will be consistent in using things like serial commas (or not using them).

If you are self-publishing and the only credentials an editor has is that he or she has been published (especially with only articles or a long list of self-published tomes), you are probably throwing your money down the drain. Why? Because these people will only be able to get your book in enough shape for a real editor to look at it. They will probably charge real editor prices to do it, too.

Yes, you can have good writers who are also good editors, but this takes two different skill sets. A good editor will be familiar with a style guide, will have a style guide they prefer and will own a copy of any style guides they use. For fiction, this is usually Strunk & White. Every fiction author should also own and use this book.

A good writer and editor will never say, "I write these great articles so I am obviously a good editor." No one can self-edit well. In fact, I frequently say that no one should use fewer than two editors and a proofreader.

If you send stuff to an editor and it comes back with only a few errors marked- you probably have a MS Word editor. Spell check is a great feature but it misses almost everything, unless you frequently forget to capitalize and punctuate your sentences. Then it will fix all of that and leave the other 70 errors per page alone. Yes, when I edit, it is not uncommon on a first pass to find 70 things wrong per page. By the third pass, the proofreader should be picking up almost nothing, but there will still be things wrong. The main job of a proofreader is to ensure everything is formatted correctly, which is why spelling and grammar should be pretty clean at that point.

Teachers usually make great editors (but not necessarily good writers). They have been editing tons of papers for years. The higher the grade they taught, the more likely you are going to find a good editor.

So, I always talk about editors I would recommend (aside from myself): Pam Pieroni and Joy McCullough (not on Guru anymore). Without having used them but based on their solid Guru profiles, I would give Visual Writing Communication and Paul Words a shot. What makes these two stand out? Their profiles are well developed, and Paul Words even goes to the effort of using a semi-colon appropriately on his.

I will not link to bad freelancers nor will I post their names. If you are hiring an editor, you should be able to spot poorly filled out profiles, misspelled profile words (if you don't know how to spell a word when you are reading someone's profile, you should look it up to make sure they are not only spelling it correctly but also using it correctly), glaring errors such as using ALL CAPS!!! Do not hire someone who uses all caps. That tells me they are uncertain which words they should capitalize or they don't realize no one wants to be screamed at on a webpage.