Sunday, August 26, 2012

3 Great Self Editing Websites

So as I am on the 7th draft of my book Dead Awakenings.  I am focusing soley on the editing factor this time.  My great friend and fellow author Darin Calhoun, has turned me onto three websites that I find to be extremely helpful in editing.

1) Grammarly.com
Grammarly has been a wonderful and in depth website that has a myriad of things it will search your work for.  It gives you an explanation as to why you don't use that form, and examples as to how to fix it.  The great thing about grammarly is that you can also down load it and import it into microsoft word, so that you don't have to copy and paste your text into their website.

2) Editminion.com
Editminion is a very easy, free to use website that has no bells and whistles at all. But hey, it's free!  It looks for 8-10 major editing issues and gives you a log you can print out with all of the items needing to be corrected.  It also tells you your most used words.  In my 148,000 word book Dead Awakenings, it told me that I use the word "That" over a thousand times.  It is my most used word. Which I found to be quite comical!

3) Autocrit.com
This is my favorite website.  I think this website breaks everything down nicely and easily into sections, making it easier to focus on certain areas.  For instance, unlike Grammarly.com you can choose to skip over the adverb, section and look specifically at the ending in preposition section.  In Grammarly, it goes from the beginning of your writing to the end, skipping from one grammar rule to the next, instead of focusing on just one at a time.

All in all, these are great resources that I think would benefit any writer trying to get their manuscript the best they can before sending off for submission, or to a professional editor!

1 comment: