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Your first editor is you. Hiring a copy editor for the first time can be daunting, and seeing the first edit can cause a fright.  

Finding an editor you trust is the first important task. Rapport with your editor is just as important as your editor’s skills, perhaps more so. Ask for a sample edit so you have a snapshot of what to expect. Most editors will oblige. After seeing suggested changes, contact the editor with any concerns or questions you have about the editing. Analyze the response: Is it professional? Courteous? Defensive? I truly hope you don’t find an editor who’s defensive, rather than authoritative, about her work. Knowledgeable editors can and do back up their suggestions with documented rationale for the changes. This is how editors who work well with dissent respond. They do exist, though, which is one reason to get sample edits—not just one—ahead of hiring an editor, because bad rapport doesn’t end well. Being contractually obligated under these circumstances can and should be avoided. Be choosey. Editors turn away clients if they foresee problems.

Many factors determine the final cost of copy editing: word count; level and type of editing needed; and the author’s writing skills, which determine an editor’s time investment. An editor’s job is to make your work salable. The more polished a manuscript is when the editor gets it, the less work for her, the less it costs the author. Your editor will likely ask for sample copy before giving a quote.

These tools and tricks will help polish your manuscript.

Formatting

Formatting is critical to the publishing process. Learn formatting standards for the market your medium. Set your formatting before typing the first word: page size, margins, font, font size, and any other standards set forth in the publishing guidelines.

Spell Check

It’s a good idea to manually run spell check when editing your work to ensure you didn’t miss any errors. While spellcheck isn’t failproof — it won’t catch all homonyms — it’s the best tool for double- and triple-checking spelling quickly.

Punctuation Check

A punctuation check to cut back on errors your editor will need to fix. The Microsoft Word grammar checker misses some punctuation errors. Other recommended tools include:

• Grammarly’s free desktop app and MS Word integration app
• ProWritingAid has a more robust Word plug-in and is user-friendly, but only available via paid subscription or 14-day trial

Troublesome punctuation for writers:

Exclamation Points

• Exclamation points denote emphasis or emotions like excitement, anger, and fear. F. Scott Fitzgerald said, “An exclamation mark is like laughing at your own jokes.” The exclamation point (or mark) first appeared as a typewriter key in the 1970’s. Previously, the apostrophe over a period required backspacing to create an exclamation point. Usage has escalated, some think dramatically, in recent years. Editors judiciously slay them.
• Overuse of exclamation points diminishes the intended effect of the mark throughout a work. The Chicago Manual of Style, dubbed “the editors’ bible,” says the exclamation point “should be used sparingly to be effective.”
• Used sparingly and judiciously, they add shape and dimension.

Semicolons

• There are only three acceptable uses for semicolons:
  • to join two related independent clauses
  • in complex serial lists like New York, New York; Los Angeles, California; Chicago, Illinois; and Las Vegas, Nevada.
  • with conjunctive adverbs like however, therefore, consequently, nevertheless, etc.

Dashes

A hyphen is not a dash and is used for different reasons than dashes. Learn the differences and how to use both devices, and they will enhance your writing. These characters deserve a dedicated blog post, coming soon. Meanwhile, Grammarly has a detailed article on dashes.

Colons

Capitalization: The first word following a colon is capitalized only if it starts an independent clause or is a proper noun. Otherwise, use lower case.

Ellipses

• Ellipses have only one correct usage: to represent eliminated words from text, most often in direct quotations, like this:
  • “Literary agents reject 96 to 99 percent of projects they receive due to … bad spelling and grammar.” In this example, “bad spelling and grammar” is the last of several listed reasons that literary agents reject projects.
  • “Literary agents reject 96 to 99 percent of projects they received due to … bad spelling and grammar …” This example indicates there are more reasons listed both before and after “bad spelling and grammar.”
• Any other use is considered bad grammar and risks rejection by editors and agents in traditional publishing.
•  Do not be tempted to overuse ellipses for pause. While some style guides consider ellipses for pause acceptable, excessive ellipses create choppy prose; avoid them, especially in dialog. Repeated use of ellipses to stall dialog can give an illusion of aphasia, a brain dysfunction caused by stroke or brain injury that impairs a person’s ability to use language. The better choice to demonstrate pause is to use em dashes.

Dialog tags

There are two predominant schools of thought on tagging dialog. One group believes “said” is the best way to tag dialog, with few exceptions. The other school staunchly advocates variety in dialog tags. Each group has their own rationale, and both groups are passionate about their opinions. Like all extremes, there is a middle ground: adding variety by using appropriate alternatives to “said.”

One fact remains: Any editor worth her salt will clean up dialog tags. Messy dialog tags slow readers down, but readers hardly notice “he said” in a sentence, if at all. Because they skip this particular tag, it actually speeds pace. Different tags can be used to add color or to strategically slow down a fast-moving scene. It’s imperative, however, to use appropriate language when tagging dialog, which represents speech. As with every part of writing, unless it’s a fantasy, authors should stick within the realm of what’s physically possible. If you can’t do it, can your fictional characters? You might consider eliminating it. Your editor will.

Many new authors are tempted to use expressive verbs that can’t represent the spoken word in a real world environment. We can’t “breathe” a thought to a lover, “laugh” a joke to a friend, or “moan” a grievance to anyone. To breathe is to inhale and exhale not words, but gasses. Try talking while simultaneously laughing. And a moan is a non-verbal, inarticulate utterance, by definition.

The good news is there are ways to spice up dialog with tags that speak to your readers without raising eyebrows. Get a good (preferably print) thesaurus, and look up “said.” Some examples of appropriate verbs to tag dialog include: proclaimed, stated, acknowledged, answered, yelled, screamed, recounted, claimed, exclaimed, announced, noted, uttered, told (requires object), along with many others. One way to test verbs is to use their present tense in this sentence: “I can ___ 100 words a minute.” If it works in that sentence, it works for tagging dialog. Like most things, it isn’t failproof, but it does help clarify.

One final note: There is no reason to include adverbs, including adverb clauses, in dialog tags if the author has revealed the speaker’s emotion either in the dialog itself or in the content leading up to the dialog. Showing is better than injecting qualifiers after the fact. Examples:

• “Hell no, you aren’t going to that dance,” Mary told her daughter emphatically. The “hell no” part showed readers Mary’s emphatic stance, rendering “emphatically” redundant.
• “Get out,” Mary exclaimed harshly. “’Get out!’ Mary screamed” eliminates the need for “exclaimed” with punctuation. Screaming is harsh, thereby negating the need for a qualifying adverb.
• “My sister died yesterday,” Mary said sadly. Unless Mary wanted her sister to die, we can assume she relays this information sadly. Expressly stating that fact is not only unnecessary, it’s redundant.
• When there’s a need for a qualifier — which should occur infrequently, if ever, in this editor’s opinion — exposition offers a better method of showing than injecting adverbs to expressly state the qualifier:
  • “I certainly will not sign that contract,” Mary said angrily. We don’t know why the contract angered her, something from her past that hasn’t been disclosed. Without this information, attentive and detail-oriented readers will wonder what caused her anger.
  • Better: “’I certainly will not sign that contract,’ Mary said. The last time she signed a non-compete agreement, she ended up unemployed for two years because she had no skills outside her industry. She signed documents indiscriminately during her employee orientation. Had she known one of those documents could prevent her finding work, she’d have opted out. If opting out wasn’t an option, she would’ve continued her job search. Hindsight.” This gives much better insight into Mary and could even be used as foreshadowing.
• To create your own adverb-slashing technique, ask yourself how you can develop your story to show that instead, then watch your story grow. Like magic!

Manuscripts can be quickly scanned for dialog (CTRL/CMD + F, search for quotation mark), and it’s a good practice to check tags during your editing process.

Another benefit of passing your manuscript through the above checks is that your edited manuscript will have more white space, as opposed to red editing markup, because you will have already done those edits.

My Approach

My job as an editor is to improve the works of my clients to the best of my ability, based on my knowledge of the writing process. Things I suggest if I find errors or other ways to improve a work:

• Grammar, punctuation, spelling, pronoun usage, syntax, active versus passive voice, clichés, diction, readability, pacing, consistency
• Excessive and unnecessary adverbs: I’m an adverb slayer, unless they serve a purpose that can’t be better served otherwise.
• Clarity: Verbosity is the enemy of clarity. Unless you have above-average editing skills as a writer, your word count will drop if you accept all changes.
• Clarity: Verbosity is the enemy of clarity. Unless you have above-average editing skills as a writer, your word count will drop if you accept all changes.

My job, in short, is to return your manuscript in its best form, still in your voice, with no new ideas added and no content removed that moves the story forward. Your book, but better.