Tag Archives: Professional Editing Service

Why Hire a Business Editor?

One way you can enhance your company’s written communication efforts—be that business emails, blog posts, press releases, or internal documents—is by hiring a business editor. A business editor is a skilled professional with expertise in bringing clarity and precision to written copy, focusing in particular on the kinds of copy produced in a business context.

What Does a Business Editor Do?

There are a number of specific ways in which a business editor can serve your company. Some examples include:

  • Moving or reorganizing sections of your text, providing a more logical sense of flow and coherence.
  • Rewriting minor sections of the copy, enhancing clarity and understanding, or simply making your arguments more persuasive.
  • Spotting and removing typos or grammatical errors, giving your copy a strong feel of professionalism.
  • Considering your text in light of the target audience and ensuring it’s well-positioned for maximum impact.
  • Alerting you to any industry terms, jargon, or acronyms that readers might not understand. (It’s very easy for business owners to overlook these issues; a second set of eyes is invaluable!)
  • Omitting any repetition or redundancy, keeping your writing as brief, clear, and focused as possible.
  • Ensuring a strong hook and clear outline, which allows your content to better hold the reader’s attention.
  • Assisting you in putting business terms and concepts into more accessible language. (Again it’s very easy for business owners to assume their ideas are clear to everyone. A business editor can inform you when that’s not quite the case!)
  • Sharpening your formatting and your section headings, making the content easy for readers to scan.

All of these services are offered in collaboration with the business owner or marketing department; a business editor will work with you to get your message across, drawing from your ideas but enhancing them with editorial polish.

What are the Benefits of Hiring a Business Editor?

There are some clear perks to enlisting the services of a business editor. Just a few of them include:

  • One of the biggest reasons to hire a business editor is that it enhances trust in your company. When you present copy that’s poorly written, unclear, disorganized, or riddled with errors, it makes you look sloppy or amateurish. A good editor can keep everything tight and clean, really helping you to look like you know what you’re doing!
  • Clarity of messaging is another important benefit. You know what you’re trying to convey to your target audience, but sometimes you may get so lost in the weeds that you don’t communicate with the necessary precision. A business editor can assist you with carefully honed messaging.
  • A business editor can also help you develop a consistent tone and voice for your brand. In other words, a business editor can work with you to make sure all your communications sound like they come from the same place. This tonal consistency can be an important aspect of brand-building.

There are a number of reasons why it can be prudent to hire a business editor. Grammar Chic, Inc. is a long-standing business editing service, with experience assisting entrepreneurs and marketers across countless industries. We’d love to talk to you more about our flexible, customizable business editing options. Reach out to us today and let’s chat: 803-831-7444 or www.grammarchic.net.

 

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Filed under Brand Management, Content Marketing, Content Writing, Editing, Social Media

An Editor Changed Your Work. Now What?

Working with an editor can be a funny thing. Often, a writer will send work to an editor, ostensibly understanding the purpose of the editorial process—that is, to make the work tighter, clearer, better.

But then, once the editor returns the work, the writer is appalled to find that it’s different from what he or she submitted. The editor has made changes to the text! What audacity!

Of course, if the editor didn’t make changes, then there wouldn’t be much point to the editing process at all. Still, seeing your manuscript marked up with red ink can be a little vexing; you obviously have an emotional attachment to your work, and while you want it to be the best it can be, you also want it to hold true to your original vision.

So what should a writer do upon receiving significant changes from an editor? Here are our tips.

Coping with Editorial Changes

First, analyze the changes. Take some time to really go through the revisions and to consider why they were made. You may even need to give yourself a day or two of distance, to get your emotions in check. What you’ll probably find, though, is that the changes were made to render the work clear and concise. Your editor is on the same team, after all, and just wants your writing to shine. Chances are, the changes made don’t alter your original message; most are probably relatively minor things that just make the work that much better.

Choose your battles. With that said, you don’t want to go to war with your editor over every tiny revision made to your manuscript—but if you feel like the changes actually alter the message or spirit of your work, or miss the point of it altogether, that’s when you should push back—gently! Which brings us to…

Be kind! No need to blow your stack and send the editor a nasty email. Instead, be polite and clear in articulating why you’re not comfortable with the changes. Explain your intention with the work, and then how those changes compromise your vision. More likely than not, your editor will be able to work with you to find a good place to meet in the middle.

Remember that an editor’s revisions are suggestions, not prescriptions. It’s still your work, and nobody’s forcing you to accept changes you’re just not comfortable with. You can graciously decline a piece of feedback that you feel misses the point of your work. With that said, if you find yourself declining every suggested change, that may be a sign that you’re not getting the most out of the writer-editor relationship.

Work with a Good Editor

Of course, it goes without saying that working with a qualified and competent editor is key. At Grammar Chic, Inc., our editors are effective at making your words shine—without changing the character of your work altogether. Learn more. Call us for a consultation at 803-831-7444, or reach out through www.grammarchic.net.

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Filed under Editing, Writing

7 Reasons to Hire a Professional Editor

Good writing and good editing go hand in hand; it’s impossible to imagine one without the other. If you want your writing to shine, then, it’s smart to consider working with a professional editor—and that’s true whether the work in question is a press release for your business or the first draft of that novel you’ve always wanted to write.

But what, specifically, are the benefits of working with an editor? We’ll list just a few of them.

Why Hire an Editor?

  1. An editor will offer you a fresh pair of eyes. The hardest part of editing your own work is that, after staring at the same document for hours, or reading it dozens of times over the span of many days or weeks, you just can’t help but gloss over your own mistakes. A third party will spot the things you miss.
  2. Editors are objective and unbiased. The editor doesn’t have any duty to uphold your feelings or bolster your self-esteem; the editor’s duty is to make the work as good as it can possibly be. The ruthlessness of a good editor can help you put aside vanity and really create the best writing possible.
  3. Editors know how to choose the best words. Good editing isn’t just about avoiding typos. It’s about expressing yourself in the clearest, most effective language possible—something an editor can assist you with.
  4. You can get help on your project at the developmental stage. If you have a piece of writing you’re just not sure about, or need to bounce off someone before you commit too much time to it, you can always enlist an editor to help you vet your ideas and make sure they’ve got real promise.
  5. Editors save you time. You could spend another few days re-evaluating your work, fussing and fretting over it again and again—or you could send it to an editor and then move on to your next project.
  6. Editors save you headaches, too. Editors are a special breed. They don’t mind going over word choices and grammatical constructions with a fine-tooth comb, or evaluating every clause and punctuation mark at the minutest level. That may sound tedious and frustrating to you, so why not get an editor to do it for you?
  7. An editor will help you distill your message. A good editor won’t try to remake your writing in their own image, but rather will help bring your work to its clearest, most effective state. You don’t need to worry about your message getting lost. A good editor will make sure that just the opposite happens.

Hire an Editor

No matter your writing project, a good editor can help you achieve its full potential. Hire an editor today by reaching out to the Grammar Chic, Inc. team at 803-831-7444, or www.grammarchic.net.

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Filed under Editing, Writing