Interestingly, because English is my second language, which I now speak perfectly (what is perfection anyway), I tend to not make many spelling errors and i work really hard to get grammar and syntax right (not always successful but at least I do best I can). I'm simply used to carefully editing everything I write. So I have no forgiveness for native speakers who can't be bothered to do the same, although, maybe they assume they didn't make any mistakes, so they don't check their writing as closely as they should.
And I need someone to check my spelling and grammar, by using MSWord why? There is no way I will ever pay someone to "read" for spelling and grammar errors. What the world needs is someone who can read it for "wrong word" errors. For example, the "vein" comment. That would have passed an edit. Why? It's not misspelled. Even if he had replaced it with "his death was not in very"... Copy editors would send it back [PERFECT]. Perfect for spelling. :-( Another. Steven King's work had no misspellings! The examples were all simply incorrect words. If my spell check program automatically corrects the word their>the, only someone actually reading it will notice. One of Tom Clancy's (inspired) series had a book that was so bad, a co-worker kept reading it, with a pen. Every page had egregious misspellings and incorrect words. He started folding down the pages to mark errors and then gave up when he realized he was folding every page. The book was not written by Clancy :-(
Competent proofreaders don't rely solely on spell-check. They read the document and spot "wrong word" errors. The reason it's worth it to hire a proofreader is that it's harder to catch your own mistakes than to catch someone else's. We all develop cognitive blind spots and tend to read over many of our own mistakes. In any case, I wasn't referring to a proofreader but to an editor, a line editor who offers comments and suggestions regarding problems with point of view, dialogue, narrative, characterization, and so on.
