The short answer is, it depends. The long answer is a little too long for just one post, so I’m going to break it down over the next couple of weeks. Today’s detailed answer is for those of you who are writing books that you intend to submit to an agent or traditional publisher.

Scenario #1: You’ve been through several drafts of your first book and you’re ready to look for a publisher. You feel confident about the book’s structure and your writing style. People who are not related to you and will give you an honest opinion have read the book and liked it. Still, you know there are some spelling and punctuation problems lurking in there.

Do you need an editor?

Probably not, at least not for the whole book.

It really isn’t necessary to have the whole book absolutely perfect at this point. If a traditional publisher does give you a contract, they will assign an editor to make sure the book meets their house style. If they need you to make any specific changes, they’ll tell you. Instead of worrying about commas and spelling and such throughout the whole book, focus on polishing your query letter, synopsis, and sample chapter(s). Perhaps you’ll want to hire an editor just for those elements.

Scenario #2: You’ve been through several drafts of your book, and it just doesn’t seem to be working. The story is good, but something seems off. You know you have serious spelling issues, and you’re not really sure how to do punctuation. People who have read the book aren’t sure that they like it. Still, you believe in the work: you know it’s a diamond in the rough that deserves to be snapped up by a mainstream publisher.

Do you need an editor?

Probably yes.

Again, you’re not shooting for absolute perfection at this point, but an editor (or a “book doctor”) can show you where the story is weak. An editor can also whip your spelling and punctuation into shape (which you will want to do if you want a publisher to take you seriously). If hiring an editor just isn’t in your budget, consider joining a writing group that will give you some honest, constructive feedback.

Next week: Do you need an editor if you’re self-publishing?

1. If one of the main characters is named Brian, search for “brain.” This will identify such literary gems as “Brain poured a bowl of Frosted Flakes.” Ew.
2. If managers and management are frequently mentioned, search for “manger” and “mange.” Because the author probably didn’t mean to write about high-level mangers who mange their departments well.
3. And if the word “public” appears frequently, please, please, please search for “pubic.” This trick saved me just this morning, when my eye skipped over the phrase in which my client said he was very interested in “pubic policy.” Trust me, you don’t want to see that in print.

I’m not saying that you have to become a page-layout expert or get all artistic with your formatting. For our purposes, it’s better if you don’t get artistic. What you want is a manuscript that looks neat and clean and is easily readable. Following these basic tips can help you get there.

1. Use a standard font in a standard size, and use it consistently (yes, even for your title and chapter headings). I recommend 12-point Times New Roman. No, it’s not the prettiest font out there, but it is generally easy to read on the screen.
2. Use italics, bold, and ALL CAPS sparingly. Overuse of anything that is not roman type in normal sentence case will mark you as an amateur.
3. Double-space the document.
4. Align your text to the left (except for chapter headings, which can be centered).
5. Use standard margins. It’s hard to go wrong with one-inch margins all around.
6. Use one space between sentences and one hard return at the end of a paragraph. There is no need to place a blank line between paragraphs unless you’re indicating a section or scene break. DO NOT hit enter at the end of every line.
7. Begin each paragraph with a left tab, or format your paragraphs to begin with a first-line indent.
8. If you’re using page numbers, insert them as headers or footers. DO NOT manually type them on each page.

If you don’t know how to do these things with your word-processing program, learn. It really isn’t very difficult to do, and learning how can save you time, and perhaps money, in the end. Alternatively, you could ask your editor to do the formatting for you. But we’ll charge you extra for it.

Were I a salesy person, that would be my slogan. I would plaster it all over my car and put it on t-shirts and baseball caps. I would write my slogan on a banner and hire an airplane to tow it around above a crowded beach. And of course I would always follow it up with my web address: www.sundragonediting.com.

I would do all this because I really believe in my slogan. Anyone who writes anything for any reason will, at some point, need an editor. If you don’t believe me, surf around and read some of the unedited, unpunctuated, misspelled dreck that passes for writing on the Internet. Read the résumé of a professional who is “punctuation challenged.” Read a doctoral dissertation with a misspelled title.

Editors could end this madness.

Editors could save the world, if only the world would let us.*

*Okay, perhaps I’ve gone too far. Editors probably can’t save the whole world from everything. But we can save writers from embarrassment and readers from poking their eyes out (a common side effect of reading too much dreck).

I think something similar is true for editors. When you care enough to agonize over every comma, you’re on your way to becoming a skilled editor. When you turn to your style guide to settle some simple matter, even though you’ve dealt with that matter a thousand times before and you’re 99.99% sure you already know the answer, you’re well on your way. When you sit up in bed at night and scream, “Oh my God! I need to fix the second footnote on page 286!” you’re well, well on your way.*

Obsessive? Maybe. But editors tend to be obsessive, in the nicest sort of way. That’s why writers love/hate us.

*But when you’re a freelancer who actually gets up at 2:00 a.m. just to fix that footnote, you probably need professional help.

Including the following five specific bits of information in your query or job post will help editors give you an accurate and fair price quote.

1. Word count. This is much more informative than a page count. Even if everyone used double-spaced 12-point Times New Roman (which they don’t), the word count on documents with identical page counts could vary widely based on the “density” of the writing. Lots of long paragraphs = higher word count. Lots of short dialogue = lower word count.
2. Project type and subject matter. Because editing a dissertation on economics is not the same as editing a children’s book about puppies.
3. What you want the editor to do. Do you need someone to run through your manuscript quickly to check for minor errors, or do you need a more thorough edit?
4. The style you need. This is especially important in academic writing or if you’re writing for a specific publication. Each style (Chicago, AMA, AP, APA, MLA…) has its own quirks, and you want to be sure you’re hiring an editor who is familiar with those quirks. (If you’re a creative writer and don’t need your manuscript to meet specific style guidelines, you can skip this one.)
5. Time frame. When will you deliver the manuscript to be edited and how soon do you need it back? If you absolutely need a quick turnaround, state that up front.

Unfortunately, Barnet, the North London borough responsible for the posters, forgot to hire an editor and the posters were printed with the following message: “Our school’s are amongst the top performing in the country.”

Awkward wording, misused apostrophe … but fixing the posters now would be expensive, and so there they hang, proudly proclaiming the schools’ apparent intention to turn out yet another crop of English speakers who think plurals are formed by adding apostrophe + s.

Can you hear me weeping?

I think that’s true. Over the years, I’ve certainly read enough slapdash work in various contexts to know that the opposite is true: If you don’t care about every word, you will not be a good writer.

Good writing doesn’t magically appear from nothing. Even very talented writers can end up writing nothing but goop if they don’t do the work of getting their words right. That fact reminds me of something a college literature instructor once told our class. More than twenty years later, I can still hear her velvet-smooth Kentucky voice as she said slowly and very seriously, emphasizing every word: “Writing. Is. Hard. Work.”

Yes, it is. But it’s worthwhile work.

*I think this was on The Kojo Nnamdi Show, but I wouldn’t swear to it. Also, I believe Weingarten was paraphrasing something someone had once said to him, but I wouldn’t swear to that either.

In the public question/discussion area of one editing job posted on Elance, an editor more or less suggested the job would be a waste of any real editor’s time and the poster should either rethink the budget or look on Craigslist for some crappy nonprofessional who would edit for peanuts. (Of course I’m paraphrasing here, but I think my version actually sounds less rude than the original.)

Another editing job on the same site was posted by a graduate student’s thesis advisor. The student was not a native English speaker, had a small budget, and needed some help editing her paper. In the job’s public question/discussion area, one editor demanded to know why the advisor wasn’t editing the paper. The editor wrote, and I swear I’m not making this up, “Why don’t u do ur job?” Again, the biggest issue seemed to be the small budget available for the job.

Yet another editing job with a small budget was posted on Craigslist recently, and one person responded publicly to tell the poster that their job and its budget were “insulting.” Certainly no real editor would work for such a small amount of money.

Look, I know that some jobs have ridiculously small budgets. If a certain job isn’t right for you or insults your professional standards, don’t bid on it. That really is all you need to do. There’s no need to try to make the writer look stupid or stingy. In fact, when you reply so rudely and unprofessionally in a public forum, you only succeed in making yourself look like an idiot.

It wasn’t love at first sight, oh no. When first I met APA, I was already in love with another style; the sun rose and set on Chicago, I thought. I took one look at APA’s in-text citations and stuck my nose in the air. “Where’s all the footnotes?” I sniffed. “Clearly, this is a style for those intimated by ibid.”

Then I started working with APA. I leafed through the pages of the fifth edition of the Publication Manual and began to learn APA’s ways. That author-date citation system makes a lot of sense, I learned, and is so much easier than footnotes. Who wants to mess around with footnotes, anyway? Suddenly that system I’d once adored seemed unnecessarily complicated: authors’ names inverted in the bibliography, in normal order in the notes; periods between elements in the bibliography, commas in the notes; publication information unadorned in the bibliography, in parentheses in the notes. Who made this stuff up?

Soon, I was taking my lunch breaks with APA. We’d sit together in a quiet corner and explore commas, ordinal numbers, and abbreviations. Chicago, meanwhile, sat alone on my bookshelf.

Don’t get me wrong—I still love Chicago, and lately I’ve been browsing through both the sixteenth edition and the 1906 edition and finding new things to adore. Footnotes, I know, aren’t all that complicated, and Chicago does include an author-date citation system, showing its versatility and open-mindedness (traits you’ll need if you’re going to hang around with me).

In many ways, my heart is still with Chicago, and probably always will be. I’ve learned, though, that it is possible to love two styles completely and unabashedly. The question now is, can I love three? Because lately I’ve been daydreaming of MLA.…

*That old standby, The Chicago Manual of Style.