How to Polish a Manuscript

In today's competitive marketplace, you should send out only your most polished, professional manuscript to editors and anybody who purchases your writing. From grammatical errors to punctuation errors, from awkward phrasing to ill-researched content, your manuscript will stand out if it's littered with mistakes. You want your writing to stand out, but not that way. Take the time to apply these techniques for polishing your manuscript. You will be rewarded, whether it's by more sales or by the recognition that you are a professional.

Instructions

1. Wait before you place the final polish on a manuscript. Resist the temptation to have your final look-through within hours of finishing your draft. Instead, wait a day, several days, a week or even months, if you can. Every writer falls in love with his work--and every writer falls out of love with it, if given enough time. Almost any bit of writing can be improved. Furthermore, when you have recently been writing your work, you are too familiar with it to notice some obvious flaws. It takes a certain amount of distance to get the perspective you need to be objective about your work.

2. Change the text font of the manuscript and print it out in hard copy. This will help it look altogether different and hopefully "fool" you into thinking that it's the work of someone else. It's always easier to edit someone else's work than your own.

3. Read through the manuscript with pen in hand and mark down any mistakes, typos or formatting errors that you see.

4. Read through the manuscript again, this time editing for content by verifying that your facts are correct and that you're actually saying what you mean.

5. Note down, during this read-through, ideas for improvement of stylistic elements such as word choice, argument, transition and sentence structure to make your manuscript easy to read. These kinds of revisions may take more time, but they are well worth it.

6. Rewrite any sections that need major work.

7. Change the order of the sections in your manuscript, as needed.

8. Make the corrections and save a copy on the computer.

9. Run the grammar and spell check on your word processing software. Look at each software-suggested change and evaluate it. Do not automatically make the changes the software recommends, as they are often wrong. It is important, too, to run these checks before you do your final edits and proofreads. It is easy to click too quickly and add an automated change mistakenly. You'll have to catch any of these errors manually, because the software won't alert you (it thinks they're correct).

10. Read through the manuscript again with a more careful eye to grammar, spelling and punctuation. This proofreading is a vital part of the polishing and must be done manually. Watch for the common mistakes, such as misusing "its" and "it's" and typing "to" instead of "too" or "two."

11. Consult grammar or usage reference books or sites on the Web for any point that is in question. Remember that natural reading trumps so-called correct usage in certain situations; however, unless you know your craft very well, stick to conventional grammar rules and re-work the sentences if necessary. For rules that are disputed, choose the usage that sounds correct.

12. Check the text in oddly formatted places, such as footnotes, headers and footers. Up till now you've been focused on the manuscript itself, so it's easy to forget these sections and to miss basic mistakes, like an old version of a title.

13. Double-check the submission guidelines and/or style guides for your targeted publisher. Make sure your manuscript conforms to the style conventions they prefer, from the small stuff--such as where the page numbers are located--to the big stuff--such as whether the manuscript should be single or double-spaced.

14. Put the manuscript aside once again for as long an interval of time as you can.

15. Once more, read through the manuscript. If you don't find any errors, you're done. If you find errors, fix them, put the manuscript aside and later read through it again.

16. When you're confident you've caught all the mistakes and rough edges to the manuscript that you possibly can, then start on the cover letter and, if applicable, proposal. And repeat all the above steps for them, if possible.

Tips & Warnings

• Be critical and be a perfectionist as you evaluate the stylistic aspects of your manuscript. Remember that if your text doesn't quite work for you, then it will work for a stranger even less, and a stranger who wants to pay for your work even less than that. In short, you need to be harsh because an editor will be much harsher.

• Send out your manuscript and all supporting material in a clean and perfect state--or as perfect as you can make it. Only then can you be confident that the editor is going to evaluate your writing rather than your polishing skills. And only then will you have a fighting chance of succeeding in getting your manuscript published.

• If they find glaring errors, editors will generally not take the time to read through your manuscript. They will assume it is the work of an amateur.