Tips 4 Editing Those All Important Sample Chapters

TIP SHEET FOR SELF-EDITING

 - review grammar rules;
- print out a hard copy of your work;
- if you've already read your work over a few times print it out using a different font;
- read your work on a flat surface with good lighting;
- edit your work in a different location each time;
- use a colorful piece of paper to highlight each sentence and edit sentence by sentence;
- edit with different focuses (punctuation, spelling, consistency, sentence structure);
- have your dictionary on hand;
- have your laptop handy to look up words;
- for consistency, do a 'find' check on words;
- know your weakness and be ready for it - if your weakness is comma use then get out a good punctuation resource and keep it handy;
- READ SLOWLY.

Common Errors That Go Unnoticed:

- words wrongly capitalized
- 'then' used instead of 'than'
- run-on sentences
- wrongly hyphenated words
- words that sound the same but are spelled different: 'their' and 'there'
- cumulative adjectives with commas
- missing commas before or after quotations

Here are some blogs with more tips:

Copy Blogger
Publishers Resource
Proof Reading tips

HAPPY EDITING!