Why use a professional editor when there are electronic editing tools that highlight spelling and grammar errors? Besides the obvious answer that electronic editing tools do not catch all the errors in any document, an editor brings precision to content.

For example, on a recent editorial project, the writer was talking about children, and he kept using the adjective “small” children. After reading through all the content, I discerned that he was actually talking about the age not the stature of the children, so I changed the modifier to “young” rather than “small.” This minor changed added precision to the word choice. To which some of you might ask, “Who cares?”

The changes that an editor makes to good content might seem insignificant; however, the difference between good content and great content is in the details. Spell check or grammar check will never tell you that there is a better word to use to express meaning. Nor will these tools help you use a colon or semi-colon correctly. Why care about such precision?

Precise language communicates meaning. An editor can take your thoughts and good content and make them great so that the meaning you want to convey comes through to the reader. An editor will take your very, very, very long sentence that is technically correct but confusing to the reader and massage it into a form that allows the reader to understand your meaning. An editor will challenge your word choice to strengthen the meaning you want to convey. An editor will clean up your punctuation so your ideas and thoughts flow smoothly.

I could go on and on, but I am an editor, so my goal is to convey this idea in less than 300 words.