Show off your concise business side: Hire an editor

Editors are tough on the written word. Sometimes the process seems a waste of time, especially if an edit job is competing with a deadline; deadlines always win. But, when you come across a misspelled word, a concept that has not been translated for stakeholder understanding, or an unfinished thought in a company’s literature, impressions swerve leaving you questioning investment or paying for the service offered. 

When representing your company in content, use the editor’s five Cs before you publish.  

Clear, Correct, Concise, Complete, and Consistent are how your content should read after an editor is finished with it. Whether it is your website, a brochure, white paper, online video, and article or blog post, there are four major editing steps that all content should see: Substantive edit, Stylistic edit, Copy edit, and Proofread.  

A substantive edit usually comes first, and entails a fact check; the writer has put everything on paper, it makes sense to them. The editor checks to see if it is going to make sense to everyone else. If any part of the content needs better researching, it is in the substantive edit that it would be re-written. For concision, the editor will knock out any repetitive information or get rid of content that does not pertain to or add anything to the main topic.   

A stylistic edit is to ensure all spellings and language used follows the business’ style sheet. A style choice might include the Canadian/British spelling or the American spelling of words. If you are an international company with a presence in the United States, many companies default to American spellings when writing content. Having an in-house style sheet ensures that all content that is created for the business is spelled the same way, capitalized the same way, and the same language is used throughout all literature. If a company is referring to their motorbike as “Vintage,” and the new writer refers to it as “Old School,” there is confusion in the vision of the product, as the language is referring to two different eras. If you decide to capitalize your business positions, for example Principal or Sales Representative, for brand consistency, it is important that those nouns are always capitalized.  

Copyediting is mistakenly where all editing starts and ends. To put content through this single editing step is not enough; we end up with websites with too much content and company key messages that are not clearly conveyed or lacking originality. Copyeditors take care of spelling, punctuation, grammar, and terminology, as well as ensuring the content fits within a word count, if specified.  

Proofreading. The most simple, but most overlooked step of editing. I was reading through a recently published marketing book, recommended to me by a colleague. I came upon one spelling mistake and was surprised, came upon a grammar mistake and was annoyed, and came upon another spelling mistake and shut the book. (I won’t mention which book it is, but the first grammar mistake occurs in the Foreword if you happen to be looking). The author’s perspective and expertise did not only lose luster, but credibility. The deadline can wait. Hire an editor. Proofread before you publish. Your readers will appreciate the attention to detail.  Another good rule to follow if you are publishing content: the writer and editor should not be the same person. The writer has been staring at the same content for days and can overlook the easy mistakes. As well, perspective is skewed--what makes sense to the writer might not make sense to the audience. The reasons to hire an editor are numerous, among them, not wasting your customers’ time and keeping your audience confident in what you are offering.