Pay special attention to step 2 for amazing results.
Implement This Pre-Publish Tune-Up For Better Submission Results
3 simple tricks to ensure editors spend more time enjoying your work and less time fixing it.
Before submitting written work to your publisher you should confirm the following three things:
- Grammatically perfect writing
- Smooth readability
- Visual appeal
Implementing a few tricks and cool tools will help you to create habits that reinforce these vital components of writing. These three things are not always easily accomplished but there are some shortcuts that will save you time and will greatly improve the quality of your reader’s experience. Your editors will edit less and enjoy your work more. It is a win-win.
1. Your piece should be grammatically perfect.
The trick: Use a grammar monitoring tool.
There are hundreds of browser extensions that offer grammar checking services, as well as apps, programs, and simple web tools. Grammar checkers work beautifully to improve the quality of every sentence. There are many grammar monitoring tools available, and your best fit will be different than mine. No matter what, I always use a grammar checker before I click to submit or before I mail a manuscript to a publisher. Using a tool to perfect your grammar will increase the audience's understanding of your work and it makes life easier for your editorial team.
2. Your piece should read smoothly.
The trick: Listen to your story before you submit it to a publisher using a text-to-speech audio tool.
We have all been told to read our posts out loud before we submit them to be published. This is solid advice and a necessary part of the process of editing our own work. I found an even more effective way to ensure the material is well polished.
I use a free text-to-speech tool that reads any text pasted into it — out loud. There are many services that offer this feature. Most devices have something built in that will read a selected text to you. Check your accessibility tools in mobile phones and computers of all types for ready-to-read tools that are already in the system.
While it may seem like reading our work out loud to ourselves should be enough, there are certain things that can go unnoticed. Things like a double instance of a word or an awkward part of the text that isn’t explained well can be easily pinpointed when we hear the words read by an external source. When reading our own work we tend to miss the mistakes because we are human. It is easy to overlook small problems in our own writing because we love our work. We are attached to the words because we crafted them.
When you bring a machine into the process you get a clear, honest audio-version of your post. Every time I do this I find things to fix and it really does help to produce a more presentable finished product.
It is easy to overlook small problems in our own writing because we love our work. We are attached to the words because we crafted them.
3. Your piece should be visually appealing.
The trick: Check the mobile version and the web version of your post to ensure your work is visually appealing.
With your written work well polished and checked for grammar, there is one last thing to check before you are ready to submit. Check that the images chosen, along with the layout of the text looks nice on the mobile version as well as the web version from a laptop or desktop computer.
You can fix sloppy alignment, replace any grainy images, and double-check for best use of headings and subheadings. Visually appealing work is neat, organized, and should follow the style guidelines of the publication you are planning to submit your work to.
Ready for submission.
After checking these three things, your work is ready to be sent to a publisher.
By confirming that your piece is grammatically perfect, reads well, and is visually appealing, you are giving your editorial team and your future audience the best work that you can offer.
Cheers.
