Most people don’t know the difference between proofreading and editing, but these services are very different. For example, they should be done at different times in the publishing process, they work with different kinds of files, and their scope of work is vastly different. If you’re unsure which one you need, read below to find out the difference between proofreading and editing.

Lists come up in writing all the time when you want to keep together multiple items. They can be made up of words, phrases, or entire clauses. For the list to make the most sense and flow well, each item in the list needs to be parallel to the others. This means each item of the list must make sense independently with the list introduction. That’s confusing. Here’s an example.

Imagine someone telling you a story at a party. It would be a hilarious story—except that they suck at telling it. Their words are jumbled, and they’re so long-winded, and they messed up the punchline. It’s just a mess. This is what line editing fixes in your story.

You may think a quick spell-check (or a thorough one) and reading the document a hundred million times is a good replacement for hiring editors. You might even send it to friends and read editing blogs and do all kinds of other things to help you do a better job editing your own book . . . but it’s not the same. Hiring a professional editor is invaluable, and here’s why:

Proper punctuation is really important! Today we will be learning about colons.

Punctuation can get really tricky! This post talks about how to use parentheses properly.