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Who Can Be A Freelance Editor
Or Proofreader?
Anyone can be a Freelance
Editor or Proofreader. That is, anyone with a good grasp of the English
language, or native language if you want to edit non-US documents.
Do you cringe at typos and grammatical errors in newspapers, magazine articles,
Internet articles and web sites? Do you find yourself correcting the errors as
you read along? Then being a freelance editor or proofreader might be the
home-based business for you.
It’s true that many freelance editors have college degrees with an English
Major. Or at the very least, they’ve taken a good number of English classes.
However, having a degree is not a requirement for being a freelance editor. The
only real requirement is a good, no a great, grasp of the English language.
There are many successful freelance editors today, who have taken some classes,
but have no degree. Those editors have a great grasp of the language.
Be careful though. There are many confusing properties of the English language.
There are many different parts to a sentence, a paragraph, and an entire paper.
It’s important to know about spelling and capitalization; but it’s just as
important to know when to use a comma versus a semi-colon, and what exactly a
dangling modifier is.
If you think that just because you use a program that checks spelling and
grammar, you’re all set, you’re dead wrong. These programs are limited in their
capabilities. They can’t check a writer’s intonation, intended purpose, or
desired outcome. These programs often check to ensure a word is spelled
correctly, but can’t determine if it is the proper word to use in a statement.
For instance, the sentence below was marked as correct using a
spelling/grammar-checking program:
Incorrect: The birds were in each of there nests.
Correct: The birds were in each of their nests.
You can probably see the error, but these so-called “expert” programs cannot.
And if you can’t see the difference, then walk, no run to the nearest door!
Seriously though, I read an article awhile back that proposed only using
programs with spelling/grammar checkers. The article indicated that this would
be all you need to put a professional document on the Internet – document
meaning article or web page.
I am in no way stating you shouldn’t use these programs. I use them all the
time, but only as a backup resource. I depend on my own knowledge of the
language to edit a document. Once my corrections are noted, I then run the
document through the spell/grammar checker. Sometimes it finds things that I
missed; sometimes it finds things that are correct, yet marks them wrong. But
they are very good at finding statements written with a passive voice. For that
I give them credit.
Yet, I digress. If you are considering becoming a freelance editor or proofreader,
I applaud you. There is nothing like the satisfaction of knowing you’ve helped
someone provide a professional (edited) document for publication.
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Julie Jessen, owner of A1 Secretarial Service,
http://www.a1secretarial.com, has been
providing editing services to clients for the past 6 years. She has helped many
clean up their writing in order to present a polished document to the public.
She is experienced in editing articles, e-books, resumes, web pages, and other
miscellaneous documents.
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