When you get your manuscript back from your editor, the last thing you want to see are lingering errors—because didn’t we pay an editor to zap every single one of them in the first place? Trust me, every editor would love to be able to “catch ’em all,” the goal of the infamous Ash Ketchum of Pokémon. But, sadly, book editing—no matter the type—just doesn’t yield perfection.

Read on to explore the countless variables of why you’re seeing errors in your manuscript.

Ambiguity in What “Editing” Means from Person to Person

More often than not, readers leave reviews about certain books needing “more editing” or asking whether the author even bothered with hiring an editor. Well, believe it or not, four different types of editing rule the fiction realm. While I don’t expect readers to know the various tiers of editing, such claims could immediately incriminate all the editors who have worked on books, as well as the author. This could not only damage the author’s confidence but also their editor’s.

Developmental editors look at big-picture, structural work. This includes world-building, character arcs and development, plot holes, assessing POVs, book mapping, and much more. Developmental editors focus on the story.

A line editor narrows in on sentence structure, readability, repeated and/or redundant phrasing, paragraph breaks, and more.

Copy editors delve into clarity of syntax, corrects grammar and punctuation, and fact-checks continuity errors—i.e., Wasn’t his hair brown in the last chapter? Why is it black all of a sudden? Did he dye it?

Proofreaders are the last defense in small error correcting. They look for typos, misspelling, and misuse of punctuation.

So, as you can imagine, getting slapped with a vague “this book needs more editing” review can be quite frustrating authors, even if they’ve gone through all four tiers of edits.

Differences in Style

In college, we’re taught to adhere to the MLA format for papers and theses. But did you know fiction has its own style? The style guide would be the Chicago Manual of Style (CMOS), the industry-standard for fiction publishing. Also, the CMOS seems to contrast the AP style—the one journalists use in newspapers.

So, what does style have to do with anything? Glad you asked. The style mostly points to punctuation use and placement, as well as the way we format certain elements within the novel. Take a gander at the example below to see what the CMOS style looks like in punctuation versus the AP style.

CMOS: “I want to take Lucas’s cat—that cute little thing—out for a walk in the cat stroller today,” Vivika said and looked at the black void rolling around on the floor.

AP: “I want to take Lucas’ cat – that cute little thing – out for a walk in the cat stroller today,” Vivika said and looked at the black void rolling around on the floor.

The difference? The apostrophe usage after Lucas and the dashes surrounding “that cute little thing.” Such intricacies can skew someone’s perception, but style is a stark contrast to an indisputable error.

My examples above are only the tip of the iceberg when it comes to the conflicting elements within each style guide.

Navigating Tracked Changes

Microsoft Word is every professional editor’s lifeblood. That said, technology is . . . well, technology. The big T-word can be severely unreliable at times, which can lead to the downfall of a smooth review of edits.

If I had a dollar for every time I’ve made a mistake because I’ve deleted a part of a sentence instead of delete its corresponding comment, I’d be rolling in cash. Furthermore, have you ever clicked your cursor to replace a letter, just for that very cursor to betray you and jump two words to the right just because?

MS Word’s Track Changes feature is sometimes faulty and will lead you down a spiral quick if you’re not used to its quirks, especially if you’re an author who isn’t familiar with its navigation.

For example, there have been times where I’ll query the author in a comment. Said author will sometimes only reply to that comment or reply and make an in-line change to the highlighted line. More often than not, if they fully delete that section, it will leave an extra space or push any straggling punctuation to the left if they didn’t delete the punctuation with it.

I want you to picture getting a bleeding red manuscript back from your editor, where sentences are restructured, paragraphs have been moved for flow, and content has been deleted. Can you imagine having to swim through all of that?

Rogue spacing and punctuation is just, by default, a byproduct of typos that can occur with the nature of using Track Changes on both ends of the spectrum. So, neither of these strange instances is the author’s nor the editor’s fault. It just happens.

Authors Adding Content or Making Changes After a Final Proofread

It’s happened to me. I’ve proofread a manuscript where, when I get ready to format the final piece, I noticed there’s . . . NEW CONTENT? I caught two thousand new changes compared to the final document I had given the author.

Ultimately, the author unknowingly introduced errors and thought it was ready to publish in that state.

Once the editor hands in their work, the author may make changes. This can be problematic for the author and their editor.

When the author adds content after a final proofread, they may—just like my experience—inadvertently introduce more errors. If the editor’s name is credited in the book as “the editor,” that will make the editor look like they don’t know how to do or just didn’t do their job.

Not to mention the author is putting their reputation on the line. Readers will look at the author as unprofessional and careless, which is the last thing they’d want because, many times, authorship is their entire career.