by Holly Huffstutler

Created on: May 24, 2009   Last Updated: May 25, 2009

Those of us who write for Helium don't have the oversight that we might have in other writing based employment. Beyond the rating process, our work isn't checked by copy editors for grammatical errors, misused facts or overall style and readability. Even if one does write for a paper or magazine and has an editor, they are remiss if they don't view their own work with an objective eye before they pass it along to be published.

If you really want to be your own editor and do it effectively, you must get forget yourself. You may know everything about your subject, having worked on it for some time, but your reader may not.

This is not to say revert to the old "assume they know nothing" rule. You should assume some intelligence and a basic knowledge of your topic depending on how obscure that topic is. But at the same time read through your finished articles and find any phrases that you wrote with the assumption that they know all about you and your topic.

Explain jargon. Don't assume they will automatically understand the little quirky phrases that amuse you the analogies you find obvious. You are in your head but they aren't. It's your job to explain all and pull them into what you know.

It may be helpful to let a finished product sit for a while before attacking it with a metaphorical (or not) red pen. In the heat of our writing frenzy we may have done that thing where we think we write "an" or "the" but in fact we haven't. Our minds see what we want to see on the page. So put that article down, save it, close it or whatever and then review it later.

You'll see your work more objectively if you create some distance. It may be hard to check for grammatical and spelling errors or unintentional word repetitions on a computer screen. Therefore, if a printer is available to you, get your new article down on paper.

Then attack it with a red pen as you would if you were a copy editor in the newsroom. It may help to look at each word individually. This seems like overkill, I know, but it actually does help catch little errors that rereading your article does not. If you pay strict attention to every word and the space between every word, the double spaces jump out at you, as do the "and and"s.

If you don't have the time to print out and look at each word or let your article wait then at the very least read through your whole article before you send it off. Don't skim, read.

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