Bad Editor here! A Suggestion to CC

[vjlenin]

Hi dear writers and CC editors,

I accept, I am a bad editor. I don't find editing articles an enjoyable thing. I mean, it is hard work. It takes time and a lot of effort to do. Also, CC has its own high standards that I really appreciate. These standards keep good writing recognized at all times. However, it is hard for me to edit articles to absolute perfection, a sort of perfection in which there is no chance that even a comma can be misplaced or omitted. That kind of standard is achievable but it is difficult.

Let me speak about myself. I have written nearly 120 articles within CC and have sold over 90 of them. I have never even once had a customer return my article. I have made quite a bit of money over here with my effort. But I joined CC long, long back. By this time, I should have written five or six hundred articles here, but still here I am with only 120 articles. I would like to write more, a lot more. In fact I have a bunch of articles sitting here with me, waiting to be edited and submitted. Why don't I do that? The answer is simple. Editing is hard!

Last week, I submitted an article to CC, but it got rejected twice, due to a misplaced comma and a sentence in which the subject and the verb did not agree. I am ashamed to make mistakes, but sometimes they happen however careful I am. I still remember the time when I submitted my first article to CC. I got rejected twice, because I did not think CC was any different from something like Helium or associated content or ezine articles (oops). The third time, I looked at the article, took over five hours for that 700 word article, looked at every sentence several times, and edited it to perfection (which I obvisouly haven't done on this message). And the result? the article was accepted and it was sold within two hours of being accepted. That was the moment that I started taking CC seriously. Since then I submitted articles to CC, and on occasion, I found rejections due to these minute errors. One thing is sure, I do take hours of work before submitting content to CC, because I cannot submit the content here as I would on my blog. Over there, I look at the article immediately after writing it, find a couple of errors that i edit out, and I publish the article. It's my blog, and it is easy for me. Also, I do not enjoy sitting reading the same article over and over again to spot minute errors.

I believe nobody does enjoy that. It's hard and boring and mind-numbing to say the least. At this time, I would like to make a suggestion to the CC people to make editing easy for all the authors.

First of all, we are good authors and nobody can deny that. We have proved it over and over again. A person who does not know how to write cannot get accpeted in this site. With that said, even the best writers make mistakes every now and then. We are human beings and that happens.

Hence, I would like to suggest that the editors be allowed to edit out minor errors that occur on an article. Such as a misplaced comma or an occasional run on sentence. This way, writers can produce more content without the mind-numbing hassle of editing, and editors can post the content faster to the system. Customers will get content much faster too. While that said, it should not allow authors to slack off on the editing department. Hence, they should be prepared to edit out as many errors as possible in the normal way. But editors of CC should be allowed to correct minor mistakes that may still come about. I hope you understand what I mean.

Second suggestion that I would like to make is that the writers should volunteer to edit content by other writers. This will prove to be a much more effective strategy in terms of creating content faster. What do you think?

For me, the sole reason why I have not submitted many articles within CC is that I find it extremely difficult to edit. It's not that I don't know how to do that, but for me, it is a hard job. You can visualize me enlarging the font within the word processor to 180 percent to spot errors faster, then looking at each sentence, reading it over and over again to see if it sounds right and has all the things in place. If I go about doing that with this forum post, it will cost me two more hours and fifty hairs from my head if you know what I mean.

Sorry to show my frustration about editing through this post. This is also intended to be a little bit funny. I don't know if you will take my suggestion, but I desperately wanted to make it.

This does not mean that people will show less enthusiasm in editing things, but they will be able to better concentrate on creating more articles. If you ask me, I am prepared to give all the necessary permission to a CC editor to edit out any simple errors on my articles. If there are more than two errors, by all means reject the article, and I will rewrite it. Is that something acceptable? Let me know your opinions, writers, editors, and everyone.

thanks
Lenin Nair

[nicole22biba]

Hi there,

Editing is indeed a hard job. What I suggest you to do is to read an article once a day, for two, three or four days in a row. Every time you read it, correct the errors you spot. I have submitted about 15 articles so far, and only one of them got rejected due to a spelling error (I used "i" instead of "I" in "Internet"). I am not saying that I am perfect, but I consider that this is one of the best methods you can use to edit articles close to perfection. Also, it is a mistake to correct an article right after you write it. Writing for CC is great because there are no deadlines - except, maybe, for direct orders and requested content. Thus, you don't have to correct the article right away. You can come back after two or three days to correct it. This way, you can spot errors, including sentence structure and spelling errors, much easier.

[topquark]

Hence, I would like to suggest that the editors be allowed to edit out minor errors that occur on an article.

Very sensible idea. I'm an editor on a couple of other content sites and being able to do this dramatically speeds up the flow of work from writer to client.

Second suggestion that I would like to make is that the writers should volunteer to edit content by other writers. This will prove to be a much more effective strategy in terms of creating content faster. What do you think?

I'd be very keen to do this, but only if there was a payment of a few dollars per article (depending on length). Sorry, but working for free doesn't pay the rent.

[Lysis]

Just a suggestion, but if it takes you 5 hours for a 700 word article, you could hire an editor yourself and give them a cut and up your price.

[vjlenin]

Just a suggestion, but if it takes you 5 hours for a 700 word article, you could hire an editor yourself and give them a cut and up your price.

Well, now I don't. That was for my first article here, and I wanted to be absolutely perfect. I read the article many times to spot even the tiniest error. Now, I don't need that kind of time. Also, I have never in my life met a person who writes perfect English over here in this part of the world, to be honest.

Hi there,

Editing is indeed a hard job. What I suggest you to do is to read an article once a day, for two, three or four days in a row. Every time you read it, correct the errors you spot. I have submitted about 15 articles so far, and only one of them got rejected due to a spelling error (I used "i" instead of "I" in "Internet"). I am not saying that I am perfect, but I consider that this is one of the best methods you can use to edit articles close to perfection. Also, it is a mistake to correct an article right after you write it. Writing for CC is great because there are no deadlines - except, maybe, for direct orders and requested content. Thus, you don't have to correct the article right away. You can come back after two or three days to correct it. This way, you can spot errors, including sentence structure and spelling errors, much easier.

Yup, that's what I normally do these days, but I wait two days max. Three reedits and a final read through before submitting. It's still exhausting, I tell you.

About paying other writers for their 'volunteer work':

I will help them out too by reading through their work and editing them for them. When I say edit, please don't mistake me. I do casual edits, not the kind of thing that I have to do with every article submitted here. Also, I believe when you let another person look over your content, he is probably able to spot some obvious errors. That way, writers can help each other, you know without much work from their part.

[Lysis]

I had a really hard time when I first started here too. Ed was tough, but I do miss his helpful posts around here.

From someone who had a reallllly tough time here at first, take from me when I say to keep it really simple with sentences. That's what helped me a ton, and I've gotten over that nasty hump. I just had 150 articles here a couple months ago. Almost hitting 250, but I'm writing here a lot more. Rejections can really be a downer. Every time I come back I get like 5 in a row.

Also reading the article aloud really helped me too.

[ArticleFly]

Hiya,

New Author here. First off all, I'm the first to admit that my grammar isn't always that brilliant and I haven't had a great education either, but I've often been told I'm a good writer. So I've come to constant content to put that to good use, since I've no trouble coming up with ideas and researching to make articles more interesting. I've resubmitted my article twice already and what I found extremely helpful was the editor pointing out where the errors were, rather than pointing out vague errors which could be anywhere in any paragraph.

Personally though, I think it's nice to see a website that takes it's for-sale content seriously. People are paying good money for full rights afteral, I guess they want to make sure buyers get what they're paying for. It wouldn't hurt to help out the authors a bit more though even if it's just in little ways, since that's what drives their content.

[jkcki]

I'm a bad writer. On many sites, I'm rated about a 3/5 stars. However, I have a 95% acceptance rate on this site. Pretty much everything I post goes through, and I'm not very careful about it. I think if you're having issues with editing that are THAT intense, it may be an issue of fundamentals. I know when I started writing online I needed to brush up on the AP style of writing. Doing things right the first time is far easier than revising it to be correct later! I find that if I focus on the structure of my writing I don't need ANY editing at all because it is already correct.

That said, there are tools that can help you with some of your issues. After the Deadline (www.afterthedeadline.com) and Grammar Check (www.grammarcheck.me) are both tools that are commonly used. Not only do these clean up some common grammar errors but they can also clean up some stylistic issues such as cliches or redundancies.

[contentwriter]

I had a really hard time when I first started here too. Ed was tough, but I do miss his helpful posts around here.

From someone who had a reallllly tough time here at first, take from me when I say to keep it really simple with sentences. That's what helped me a ton, and I've gotten over that nasty hump. I just had 150 articles here a couple months ago. Almost hitting 250, but I'm writing here a lot more. Rejections can really be a downer. Every time I come back I get like 5 in a row.

Also reading the article aloud really helped me too.

English is not my primary language. The worst rejections I've gotten are due to the way I write, not missing periods or anything like that. For me to keep working here (if I don't hit the max 3 rejection limit first), I'll have to rethink my whole approach to writing. I guess I should spend more time reading previews of other writers' articles.