Welcome to Reba Hilbert Editorial Services

Testimonials

Reba is one of the best editors I have worked with. Her work is thorough, reliable and efficient. She is always a pleasure to work with. I would recommend her to even the pickiest of authors.

– Lora Gallagher, Production Manager Outskirts Press

Seven Bar Jokes Involving Grammar and Punctuation

Thanks to Eric K. Auld... 1. A comma splice walks into a bar, it has a drink and then leaves. 2. A dangling modifier walks into a bar. After finishing a drink, the bartender asks it to leave. 3. A question mark walks into a bar? 4. Two quotation marks “walk into” a...

MAKING TIME TO WRITE WHEN YOU HAVE KIDS

Making time to write is hard when you're a stay-home parent. My own kids are teenagers—busy, busy teenagers with jobs and social lives and cell phones and their own agendas. If I wanted to work on a novel, they’d probably be thrilled to have me out of their hair. But...

Dialogue Tags

One of the joys of reading short stories or novels is being transported into a different life, a different country, a different perspective. But when an author inadvertently makes his or her presence suddenly known, it’s jolting for the reader to be jerked back into...

COMMA SPLICING AND RUN-ON SENTENCES

One of the most common errors I see in manuscripts is comma splicing (also called run-on sentences)—a grammatical no-no. Comma splicing is the use of a comma to join two independent, complete sentences that can stand on their own. (I wrote a sentence, I used a comma...

The Realities Of Freelancing: Is It The “Free” Or The “Lance”?

Many people go into freelance work with wide-eyed optimism. Freelancing. Emphasis on the free. They imagine the freedom of setting their own hours, grabbing the laptop and jaunting off to work in a trendy coffee shop, being their own boss, enjoying more leisure time,...

WHY WRITERS HIRE EDITORS

It’s clear why writers should use an editor if they’re planning to self-publish a book. If they don’t have their manuscripts edited, their work will be published as is—typos and all. Writers who plan to self-publish can either hire an independent editor, purchase the...

If you’re a writer and need a professional, objective review of your work, I can help. From proofreading to more in-depth editing, your manuscript will be clean, well formatted, and technically sound. Avoid problems with clarity, plot, dialogue, point of view, and style issues so your readers (or potential agents) aren’t distracted—and you can let your true vision shine!

Contact me if you need help with:

Editing

Proofreading
Copyediting
Content Editing
Fact Checking / Research
Manuscript Review
Website Editing
Academic Editing

Copywriting

Press Releases
Book Jacket Copy
Query Letters
Cover Letters
Blurbs
Synopsis
Guest Blog Posts

Reba Hilbert is a full-time freelance editor and copywriter with 20 years of experience, specializing in editing creative writing as well as nonfiction.

Reba is a consummate professional editor who provided an invaluable service to me in preparing my manuscript for publication. We all know the old saying that a lawyer who represents himself has a fool for a client. Well, the writer is equally foolish for not calling upon an excellent editor like Reba. I work as an editor for academic journals and teach editing, but I wouldn’t think of publishing without the assistance of Reba’s keen editorial perspective.

– Dr. Alex Reid, Associate Professor of English and Director of Composition and Teaching Fellows, SUNY Buffalo