Want to help support the author?
Do you go to a critique group? Have a critique partner? Offer to proof a writer friend’s manuscript? Pay a professional editor to go over your own work? Knowing a nice selection of basic editing symbols can help you more quickly and effectively communicate your feedback.
Likewise, refer to this chart when you receive feedback to help decipher someone else’s comments.
View the full list of available organizational documents.
All documents are © Annie Neugebauer. These documents are intended for personal use only. Copyright applies. Please ask permission for anything other than personal record-keeping. If you’d like to share these with writers you know, please send them the link so they come visit me here. Thank you all so much for your support!
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VERY handy tool for any writer! I love how universal these are; I used to edit my high school yearbook, then my college newspaper, then several magazines. A couple of weeks ago my agent sent me a hard copy of my manuscript with line edits, and it was like getting to speak a familiar language once again. (Although, there was one symbol I’d never seen…I ended up taking a picture of it with my phone and sending it to her to decipher!)
Thanks Natalia; that’s awesome! As a fellow speaker of said familiar language, I sure would love to know what the mysterious symbol was. =)
Haha, sorry for the delayed response! The symbol was three dots over a word. Almost like an ellipsis, but more spaced out. She said it means stet. Ever seen it?
No, how awesome! I looked it up just now. I see that it is
usually used with dots or dashes under a word next to “stet,” which means “let it stand” in Latin. Since it is a less-used editing mark, most people just write “okay” or a check-mark next to things now instead, for clarity. Cool; I learned something new. =) Thanks Natalia.