About Editing, Proofreading, and Spell Check

Not the Same, Actually Worlds Apart

All three, editing, proofreading, and spell check, are important to book publishing. No doubt there are many opinions about all three and naturally, I have mine.

After writing, editing is the most important of these three. And there are probably some editors who believe that editing is more important than writing. I’m not among those. Editing is of critical importance, but without writing editing doesn’t exist so, it’s first among the three in the title but not first.

Despite the importance of editing, it can be a slippery slope. Writing is about what you see and feel about a subject, a thing, a story, or almost anything. If the editor helps make your vision of these clearer to the reader, he or she is doing the job. If the editor attempts to tell their vision of your story, it may be time to move to another editor.

A search for the job of editor in Google will render a long list of responsibilities, many of which are part of the job within a large, traditional publishing firm. Self-publishers like us need editors, but we have to be active participants in the process to avoid losing our voice.

Proofreading is also essential because it involves checking for errors, including punctuation and spelling.

Spell Check is just what it shows. It checks your document for misspelled words and gives you the opportunity to correct them.

I handle most of my basic editing, proofreading and spell checking myself. The editing by going through the document several times critically. I also use ProWritingAid and previously used Grammarly while writing any document. Both do a good job of catching obvious mistakes and making correction easy.

I use Microsoft Word for most of my documents or book drafts, but it sometimes irritates me, and I look for something to replace it. It turns out there are lots of suitable replacements but important tools like ProWritingAid are not compatible with other than Microsoft Word, so I wind up staying with it. It’s times like this you realize a spell checker alone won’t hack it.

I recently got OfficeSuite for a seven days free trial to replace Microsoft Word. I contacted them about working with ProWritingAid, which I already own and they informed me they have a built-in spell checker and that won’t hack it. Now I have to make certain to cancel before my seven days are up or they will process my credit card payment.

It looks like I will stay with Microsoft Word, at least for now.