Even literary giants like Fitzgerald needed a professional editor — here’s what that could mean for you

Editor’s note: This article was reviewed and updated in July 2026 to meet Expert Editor’s latest editorial standards.

Professional editing is not just for your “typical writer”, such as a first time novelist or a PhD student. It’s also for the literacy and academic elite. Some of the most prolific writers and thinkers in the history of the world needed editing help to ensure that their ideas came across clearly to their readers.

Beloved novelists and Nobel Prize winning scientists have employed professional editing services for centuries. Here are a few:

F Scott Fitzgerald

Fitzgerald wrote “The Great Gatsby,” which is widely considered to be one of the greatest novels in the history of the English language. It could have turned out to be “The Mediocre, Slightly Confusing Gatsby” if F. Scott Fitzgerald hadn’t sought out Maxwell Perkins, his editor at Scribner’s, to polish up his work before it was sent out to change the world. His spelling has been described as downright “lamentable”. Nearly 90 years after “Gatsby” was first published, readers are still focused on his Fitzgerald’s breathtaking storytelling ability instead of his technical writing mistakes, thanks to professional editing.

Fitzgerald’s working relationship with his editor is also a reminder that editing is a collaborative, not a corrective, process. An editor doesn’t simply hunt for typos — they help a writer see where a narrative loses momentum, where a character’s motivation feels unclear, or where the pacing drags. Fitzgerald submitted drafts that were messy at the sentence level, yet the emotional architecture of Gatsby endured because a skilled editor helped him sharpen what was already there, rather than rewriting it from scratch.

Albert Einstein

When it came to the universal language of math, Einstein had no problem expressing his theories clearly. Writing for a general audience in English was a different matter. When he set out to co-write <em>The Evolution of Physics</em> — the 1938 popular-science book that introduced relativity to lay readers — Einstein partnered with physicist <a href=”https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leopold_Infeld” target=”_blank” rel=”noopener”>Leopold Infeld</a>, who helped shape the book’s English prose so Einstein’s ideas would land clearly with readers outside physics. Academic editing wasn’t available via the internet in Einstein’s day, but thanks to science, engineering and a few decades of technological wizardry, the new generation of great thinkers can access editing assistance faster than you can say e=mc2.

Einstein’s example is particularly instructive for scientists, engineers, and academics writing outside their native language. A groundbreaking idea buried in awkward phrasing or grammatical confusion can be dismissed or misunderstood by peer reviewers and journal editors — not because the science is wrong, but because the writing fails to carry it. Having a professional editor review a paper for clarity, sentence structure, and logical flow can mean the difference between a manuscript that gets accepted and one that gets returned with a rejection note citing “poor readability.”

Jane Austen

Austen was the 19th-century author of such enduring tales as “Pride and Prejudice” who reportedly took little pride in her own punctuation, grammar and spelling skills. Austen’s brother claimed that she used no editor and that her manuscripts were completely “finished” when they left her desk. However, in 2010, an Oxford University professor’s study of Austen’s surviving handwritten manuscripts found spelling, grammar, and punctuation patterns markedly different from the polished published novels — a finding that sparked debate among scholars about how much editorial hands may have shaped her final prose.

The Oxford discovery is a striking lesson in the mythology that often surrounds great writers. We tend to imagine gifted authors producing flawless prose in a single inspired sitting, but the manuscript evidence tells a different story. Austen’s handwritten pages showed inconsistent punctuation, irregular capitalization, and spelling variations that would raise flags in any modern copy-editing pass. The published versions her readers came to love were the product of careful, behind-the-scenes editorial work — work that was quietly credited to no one, and therefore easy for her family to deny.

What this means for everyday writers

The takeaway from Fitzgerald, Einstein, and Austen isn’t that great writers are secretly bad writers. It’s that even exceptional talent benefits from a second pair of eyes. Every writer, no matter how skilled, is too close to their own work to catch every inconsistency, unclear passage, or mechanical error. It’s a familiar problem for anyone who writes: when you read something you wrote yourself, you tend to read what you meant to write rather than what’s actually on the page.

To see what this collaboration actually looks like on the page, take a plain, wordy sentence such as: “The thing about writing a novel is that you have to keep going even when it feels like it’s not working, because most writers give up around this exact point in the process.” A professional editor doesn’t rewrite the idea — they tighten it: “Most writers quit exactly here. Keep going.” Same meaning, half the words, twice the impact. That is the invisible work behind Gatsby’s tightest lines and Austen’s sharpest exchanges: not new ideas, but the discipline to cut everything that isn’t carrying weight.

Professional editing helps bridge that gap. Whether the document is a debut novel, a scientific journal article, a postgraduate thesis, or a business report, an experienced editor brings an objective perspective that the author cannot provide for themselves. The goal is never to change the writer’s voice — it is to make sure that voice comes through as clearly and powerfully as possible.

What to look for in a professional editor

If you’re convinced but don’t know where to start, a few things separate an editor who will genuinely improve your work from one who simply marks it up.

Look for someone who asks about your intended audience and goals before touching a single sentence — the right edit for a literary agent submission is not the right edit for a thesis committee or a general reader. Ask whether they work in tracked changes or comments, so you can see and approve every suggestion rather than receiving a silently altered manuscript back. And ask for a sample edit on a page or two of your own work before committing to a full manuscript — it’s the fastest way to judge whether an editor’s instincts match your voice. Professional editors, including our own team at Expert Editor, typically start every project this way: sample edit first, a brief on audience and goals second, changes tracked throughout.

Editing and proofreading services aren’t just for the Fitzgeralds, Austens and Einsteins of the world. In 2014, editors are readily available. Anyone with the courage to write something special can reach out to a professional editing company and receive the same help that was once reserved for the writing elite.