• Have you written a best-selling book but can’t get it to sound just right?

• Are you doing your masters or PhD dissertation and want it to be perfect before you submit it? Remember that if you have a comma or a hyphen in the wrong place, the examiners could mark you down…

• Do you feel that you have a book in you but don’t know where to get started?

If you answered ‘Yes!’ to any or all of the above questions, then you need to engage the services of an editor.

An editor will look at a piece of writing and will check it for a number of things. These are, for example:

• Grammatical errors
• Typos
• Consistency with regard to facts, capitalisation as well as how words are spelled
• Correct and incorrect facts

To make these corrections to a text, the editor could employ a number of different methods. For instance:

• They could choose to make their edits using a tool, on Microsoft Word, called track changes. In essence, when this tool is activated Word shows where the editor has made the changes. So if they’ve decided to delete a word, the reader will be able to see that the editor has deleted said word and which word has been deleted.

• What they could also do is to print out the document and, using a red (or similar colour) pen, write their changes out on the document. They would then present the hard copy to you or either scan it in so that you can see what they’ve done.

There is no difference between doing edits on hard or soft copy. At the end of the day, it amounts to the same thing as the edits are still being made on the document and you, the client, can see them.

The difference is that with soft copy editing, it is easier to transfer the edits onto the document as all you, the editing client, need to do is to choose which edits you want to accept and which ones you want to reject.

If the editor does their edits on a hard copy, it’s up to you to transfer them onto the electronic copy – which can be time-consuming depending on how many edits have been made.

If you have an important document that you need to present to an audience – be it a thesis or an important email – hiring an editor is a good idea.

It is not a requirement to send any work for an editor to have a look at but if you don’t decide to go this route you risk having grammatical errors and typos creep into your document – which will ultimately detract from what you’re trying to say.

If you want to write a book, but don’t know where to get started, I can help you to get your manuscript ready for publication. If you have started writing, I will look at it, give you pointers on how you can carry on and will be with you – every step of the way – until both you and I are absolutely positive that this is the book that you want to publish.

Want to find out more? Fill in this form, telling me a little bit about you, your book and I’ll contact you to set up a Zoom session so that I can meet you and you can decide where you want to go from here!

If you need to hire an editor – no mattemer how large or small the document may be – then you need to hire Lia Marus because:

• I have more than 10 years of experience in the industry in a variety of mediums such as magazines, newsletters, digital marketing and publishing, as well as academia.

• My past clients rave about me and keep on coming back for their editing requirements.

• I am competitively priced and turn my documents around quickly.

I charge R45 per page, which equates to R0.15 per page.