Editing of any manuscript is best done by someone other than the person who did the writing.
Jargon and familiarity with the topic can sometimes cause an author to think he has written one thing when he has really written something different. It's a matter of not being able to see the forest for the trees.
When you ask someone to edit your manuscript, ask them to do three things:
1. Check the spelling, grammar, and punctuation.
2. Check readability - does the information make sense and does it flow?
3. Question facts that seem wrong or do not make sense.
Ask your editor to make all their comments in MSWord using the Track Changes feature. This feature automatically puts the comments in a bright color and underlines them so they cannot be missed.
The readability of your manuscript includes checking things like using acronyms without introducing them. An acronym is a short form made from the first letters of a series of words. Sometimes they are good to use, and there are times when you might prefer to avoid them. For example, you might choose to always spell American Authors Association rather than shortening it to AAA and risk having it confused with the automotive club. Whereas JAMA is a widely recognized acronym for the Journal of the American Medical Association that has no competitors.
Always use the long form of an acronym the first time it comes up, and put the acronym in parentheses. Your first reference to the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) would look like this. Then you can continue using the acronym - as long as you use it frequently. If the acronym only comes up twice in a 20,000 word manuscript then you should use the long form both times.
Readability is also impacted by unanswered questions. As your editor reads the manuscript, ask them to mark any questions they have that don't get answered. This is really important when the question is directly related to the content of a section.
You wouldn't want to tell a reader you are going to explain something in a later section and then forget to include that section. In the same way, you don't want to promise to address a peripheral issue within a section and forget to do it.
Once your editor has read through your manuscript and marked it up, it's time to make the changes. Be sure to have the manuscript re-read after you make those changes.
Conrad Hall is an editorial and direct response copywriter. Visit his blog http://www.TheMarketingSpotlight.com for daily posts about how to do marketing well. You can get a copy of his book "Writing E-Books for Fun and Profit" at http://www.TheBookOnEBooks.com.
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