“I use Grammarly to Rasheed”? should be “I use Grammarly, too, Rasheed.” But that’s just me being snarky. Grammarly is, at best, the first sieve to use before inflicting raw work on an overworked editor.

Editors occasionally make mistakes, but if they don’t proofread their own replies and edits, it damages credibility and trust.

In all fairness, there’s a little thing we might call the Nitpicker’s Law: When critiquing others in public, the odds of making your own glaring errors goes up proportionately.

😉

Decades ago, before I had a PC and word processing software on my desk at work, I wrote documentation by hand and literally cut and pasted illustrations onto the page. Manuscripts were sent up to a pool of typists, most of whom fancied themselves proofreaders and editors. Most were not qualified as either of those things. I knew a secretary who typed about 120wpm, but her accuracy was only about 50%, so that was wasted talent, too.

It got SO bad that I had to send drafts to them with errors deliberately inserted, and Post-It notes stuck to the stack saying things like, “There are errors in here and I’d better see them in the typed version you return to me or I will have a word with your boss.” This was a waste of everyone’s time, but they got the point and I stopped having to play stupid games.

I have worked with some of the best editors, professionally, and have encountered some stunningly excellent ones here on Medium, as well. (I’d name them, but worry that they’d just be swamped with requests for free edits when, in fact, their time and skills are worth more than I can reasonably afford.) The trick most writers must learn is how to tell the difference — when to accept changes gratefully, when to accept them graciously, when to ignore them, and when to fight them.