My editing pipeline 2: Grammarly, humans, and listening.

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With the first main edit of Jack Gilmour: Wish Lawyer finished on with Autocrit, it’s time for the next pass. Time to start tidying up the text before sending off to my editor. All of which, leads to the obvious question…

Why bother editing when your editor will do it for you?

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There are two main reasons for this:

Ask yourself “what do I want my editor to focus on?” Working on useful things like structure, or getting bogged down in endless minor corrections?
The percentage game. Even if a good editor spots 95% of errors, the more you have to start with, the more will sneak through. It’s the same reason to proof-read afterwards, too (but more of that later).

So what tools are there to help? MS Word’s basic spelling and grammar checker will only get you so far.

Grammarly

Grammarly comes in two versions – a premium and free version. I use the free one, which I find more than enough for my ‘hobbyist’ writing. I use it as a plug-in for MS Word, but it also comes as a stand-alone program, and an add-in for Chrome.

[image error]Whereas Autocrit will give you the broad brushstrokes, Grammarly focuses on the finer details. Incorrect words, strange comma usage, repeated words and use of tense all come under the spotlight. It also explains why it thinks the error is there, which can be handy for triaging.

Here’s an example of a comedy error Grammarly found that Word didn’t:

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