Ever heard of peer editing? The idea is that you can get a friend to help you clean up a piece by performing basic editing work on it. Of course, this friend is hopefully a writer of moderately decent skills too.
Good Writers, Inexperienced Editors
Even if you’re both good writers, there’s a good chance that neither of you brings enough experience as an editor. That could be an issue, so it is good to establish a base about what you will each do.
Proofreading
For the most part, I’d recommend doing away with proofreading altogether. Correcting case, punctuation, spelling and tense is important, but it’s something you should be able to handle on your own, especially with the help of an editing software.
What You Should Focus On
During peer editing, it’s best for each of you to focus on aspects of writing that aren’t as easy to fix automatically. Specifically, it’s best to focus each other’s energies in areas such as:
- content
- structure
- readability
- and form
Yep, those things sound more difficult than catching misspellings. But that’s exactly what you need a peer editor for.
Notations
An important thing to consider is to develop a guideline for your editing notations. This will make it easier to both jot down potential improvements and understand those suggestions. Consult an editing guidebook to draw ideas from.
