Editing Tools

Writing Program
You could easily make a whole class about the different writing programs on the market, which demographics prefer them, and how to work in them. Multiple classes, even. I feel like every day, I hear about some new program people are writing in (and expect their editors to know). I’ll be honest: I like Microsoft Word. I will always ask for manuscripts in Word.

Why? Macros. Macros are lovely time-saving devices in Word that seem complex at first but are SO WORTH IT. I’ll talk more about them in another blog.

I’ve also worked in Google Docs, Adobe Reader, Pages, and Fictionary. I’m certainly not opposed to learning new programs, but time spent learning Scrivener, Dabble, Atticus, Final Draft, or whatever expands both the timeline and the budget.

It’s pretty rare nowadays for anyone to ask for offline editing, but it does happen. One publisher mailed me their proofreading test, both to check my skills and to see if I understood the editing symbols. Happily, I passed, but I haven’t been asked to do anything else with paper and pen.

Style Guide
Many freelance editors work with a variety of clients but generally within a single genre. I know someone who only works on medical texts, meaning he’s probably got the American Medical Association (AMA) style guide memorized.

For every genre, there is a style guide. It lays out standard practices for commas, capitalization, hyphenation, formatting, document design, citations, etc. They exist to maintain consistency. They’re often very long and quite complex. Most American fiction writers subscribe to The Chicago Manual of Style (CMOS).

Depending on what program you’re using, there is additional software like PerfectIt that functions like a spellcheck but for style guides.

Dictionary
Why would anyone have a dictionary when there’s a perfectly good spellcheck? Or AI-powered proofreading software? Well, unlike generative AI (which makes things through plagiarism), AI-powered proofreading like spellcheck is very useful…except when it’s not.

Absolutely use it. An editor would be a fool not to. But you also need to check things yourself, like proper nouns, fictional words, homonyms, words with multiple spellings, slang, foreign words, British vs. American English, etc.

Luckily, there are more dictionaries than you can shake a stick at, and many of them double as thesauri, which is good because one thing AI (generative and nongenerative) consistently fails at is understanding connotations. That’s where Merriam-Webster and the Oxford English Dictionary come in.

Usage Guide
This is a little tricky to explain, but style guides discuss the aesthetics of words, whereas usage guides detail the application of words. Usage guides tell you how words/phrases are used, if modern usage differs from historical usage, how commonly used the word is, situations in which the word is appropriate (or not), whether the word is offensive to a certain group, etc.

Common entries include Fowler’s Dictionary of Modern English Usage, Garner’s Modern English Usage, and The McGraw-Hill Desk Reference for Editors, Writers, and Proofreaders.

Grammar Guide
Yes, this is a separate category from usage and style guides. No, I’m not yanking your chain. Grammar guides look at syntax (in English, we need sentences to go subject -> verb -> object) and construction (putting sentences together coherently). I’m not talking about basic punctuation here; this isn’t something that software can do.

Dreyer’s English is a great example of a grammar guide that breaks things down into probably more detail than you’ll ever need (but you never know!).