| 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 a few months ago 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. ---------------------------------------
Article written by Julie Jessen, owner of A1 Secretarial Service. Julie has been providing editing services to clients for the past 5 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, résumés, web pages, and other miscellaneous documents.
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