Advice from magazine editors

If you’re a freelance writer, I think you’ll be interested in the comments of seasoned magazine editors that we recently posted online (click here). As part of my article in the November 2010 issue of The Writer titled “25 tips to sharpen your writing,” I asked the editors to summarize, for our Web site, the most common errors they’ve seen in manuscripts.

Read through their advice and I think you’ll pick up some good tips on mistakes to avoid.

Besides our publisher and longtime editor, Elfrieda Abbe, our lineup of experts includes Richard Snow, well known for his longtime service at American Heritage; Corey S. Powell, editor-in-chief of Discover; Kurt Chandler, senior editor of Milwaukee Magazine; and Errol Laborde, editor of New Orleans Magazine and Louisiana Life Magazine.

Here’s a little flavor of their advice, from Snow:

“Do not say that the reader is about to encounter something ‘astounding’ or ‘almost unbelievable.’ That’s like prefacing a joke by announcing, ‘This is hilarious’--the listener will always put up his guard: ‘I'll be the judge of that.’ ”

 --Ron Kovach, senior editor, The Writer

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