All kinds of writers (fiction, business, non-fiction, etc.) have all kinds of reasons
they need to self-edit.
For starters – well it’s the place to start. Even if you
have it in your budget to hire a professional editor or you have friends in the
office standing by to do a read through, the fact of the matter is you need to
do a self-edit first…and maybe last.
Great news is there are all kinds of helps you can use. But, of course there are advantages and
downsides to using those tools.
The advantages?
Many tools are free or low cost, yep, you can use many of
them for nothing. These tools aren’t
human so if you have a difference with them it is quite impossible to insult
them or cause hard feelings. If you pay attention to what you find when using
these tools you’ll learn stuff. Really, you will. And a tool won’t judge you
for misspelling the same word over and over, it will simply point that out for
you to correct.
The disadvantages?
One is the same as the advantage – the tools aren’t
human. They won’t think for you. A tool
may give you a heads up regarding potential problems, but it’s you as the
writer who needs to decide what to address and how or if you should ignore it
altogether. A tool isn’t going to fix it
for you. Sometimes a tool unearths something that isn’t clear and you’ll have
to dig around in craft of writing books
or style guides to figure it out.
So why don’t you give some helpful tools a try?
Check out the
Hemingway App http://www.hemingwayapp.com/desktop.html It will highlight adverbs in blue. After
that you can dump them or leave ones you think are important leading the way to
showing your reader instead of telling a story.
When you
approach self-editing remember first it’s good to begin with the overview then
work your way down to sentences and fixes for words. Use only one tool at a
time or you’re really going to confuse yourself. And it isn’t necessary to use
every tool in your toolbox every time you write. Think about which ones will do
the job the best.
Here’s a
link to eight proofreading tools you might find useful.
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