Sunday's Links to Writing & Marketing Blog Posts

THE VALUE OF A GOOD PROOFREADER

By: Janice Hardy

As creative folk, we writers prefer to write or edit more than proofread. Proofreading is hard work and no fun, but it's critical if you're going to self publish. A manuscript filled with errors looks unprofessional, and it doesn't take long to make a bad first impression with a sloppy novel. 

My writing book recently went through the proofreading stage. I hired a fantastic gal who came highly recommended, fully expecting little to no changes because (and here I shake my head in foolish shame) the manuscript felt "clean." It had been read by multiple people multiple times and I thought most of the errors had been caught. 

I was wrong. 

So very wrong. 

I'm no stranger to typos, so I read through the manuscript with what I thought was a fine-toothed comb. I checked and double-checked everything, and it still wasn't enough, because there were things I just didn't know. "Writing" uses a different skill set than "proofreading." 

I'd proofed for content and even tried to catch the mistaken "the" vs. "then" and missing words and whatnot, but a good proofreader catches so much more than we writers ever can. They also catch things like:

. . .

To read the rest of the post, click here:

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If you missed my writing & marketing tweets and retweets yesterday, here they are again:

• Is It Safe: When to Tell People About What You’re Writing | Drew Chial http://ow.ly/VcMmN
• When Not to Write | WritersDigest.com http://ow.ly/VcMxU
• The Last Point of View Cheat Sheet You'll Ever Need - DIY MFA : DIY MFA http://ow.ly/VcMDi
• 100 Words for Facial Expressions http://ow.ly/VcMIg
• 7 Times You Need to Wear a Mask to be a Better Writer | Writing and Wellness http://ow.ly/VcMNE
• Plot Archetypes and Power Plays: Where Does Your Story Fit? - DIY MFA : DIY MFA http://ow.ly/VcMSC
• 3 Reasons Why YA Matters | Writers' Rumpus http://ow.ly/VcMWV
• The Fatal Flaw in Weak Descriptions | Jane Friedman http://ow.ly/VcN1Q
• 3 Simple Tips on the 'Show, Don't Tell' Mantra - Writer's Edit http://ow.ly/VcNao
• Synonyms for 95 Commonly Used Words - A Mini-Thesaurus for Writers - Writers Write http://ow.ly/VcNln
• 5 Great Tips for Reading Poetry Aloud - http://ow.ly/VcNtE
• Fiction University: Do We Expect Too Much Realism in Our Stories? http://ow.ly/VcOnt
• How A Pantser Outlines: My Method | Molly Greene: Writer http://ow.ly/VcOOx
• Fiction University: The Value of a Good Proofreader http://ow.ly/VcOsc
• How to Write Can’t-Look-Away Chapter Breaks (What I Learned Writing Storming) - Helping Writers Become Authors http://ow.ly/VdfKR

Happy writing and running, Kathy