It seems PerfectIt 5 is an editor’s heaven, but I’m not privy to the software as an iMac user. The latter didn’t seem bothersome as I’ve been in a habitual, dedicated relationship with one document editing system for a few years now. However, when I heard Intelligent Editing was creating a new PerfectIt Cloud software, I jumped gleefully at the opportunity to review it. Since compelling iMac owners to purchase a PC solely to accommodate PerfectIt didn’t seem plausible, the engineers at Intelligent Editing created a Cloud version of the software. The idea of linking a document editing program to The Chicago Manual of Style (CMOS) Online seems like an encounter with a mythical creature. It’s the Pegasus for which other editing software programs didn’t think to capitalize.

Manually thumbing through CMOS can be intimidating on a good day and downright daunting when one needs to retrieve a style rule in a jiffy. Conveniently, PerfectIt Cloud provides a digital experience where professionals have direct access to CMOS guidelines and modifications with a click of the PerfectIt button in Word’s title bar. After several weeks of tinkering with the software, the CMOS collaboration is its most significant selling point. It is the rock star driving the reason PerfectIt Cloud may be more attractive to professionals who rely heavily on CMOS. When I failed to italicize “The Chicago Manual of Style” in my review’s rough draft, the software presented a pleasant but assertive message, “The title of a book is usually italicized, including an initial ‘The’ belonging to the title. See more from CMOS 8.168.” Agreed. Thank you kindly for the reminder and the rule!

In my current editing practice, I’m accustomed to completing an assessment within a certain amount of time, depending on the word count. Therefore, my one criticism is the time the program takes to complete an error and consistency check. Although seeing the CMOS rules appear beside my Word document made me giddy, it took more time to see them than I preferred. My waiting period for a document containing 1,400 words or less is roughly twenty minutes, sometimes much longer. I’ve conducted several assessments on various documents (professional editing projects, blog posts, graduate school writing assignments) at different times of the day. Unfortunately, my efforts were inconsequential.

Chris McKay, the customer support manager at Intelligent Editing, graciously spoke with me regarding my issue. He provided insight into and a remedy for the lag time. Unlike PerfectIt 5, the Cloud requires continuous internet connection and patience. Any break in connectivity, however slight, may cause a lag in the editing assessment. Additionally, McKay informed me an Apple user might run into issues using a Windows add-on. He recommended a hard drive partition; it splits the Mac drive into two sections—one for the Mac system and one for Windows. That way, the user can choose the Windows operating system when she wants to use PerfectIt for a timely edit.

Is the Cloud version as perfect as its Windows-friendly counterpart? Not yet. But McKay and the engineers at Intelligent Editing are working to make it so.

Latoya Johnson is an editor, graduate student, and U.S. Air Force veteran who spends most days lounging on her back porch. She lives in Santa Rosa Beach, Florida, with her daughter and pet rabbit.

If you’re like me, fellow editors, you have a document open to edit on your PC and then you also have open links to the Merriam-Webster (M-W) online unabridged dictionary and Google. I also open a link to my online Chicago Manual of Style (abbreviated as CMOS and pronounced “SEE-moss”).

I hope you also have PerfectIt sitting up there on your Word ribbon as your go-to editing checker. It’s also one of my essential tools, and the good news is that PerfectIt has married CMOS and—get this—shows you and links directly to actual citations in CMOS and defers to spellings in M-W. Is this editor heaven?

I was delighted to test the beta version that will be available to you now.

I bring in PerfectIt at two critical times in a book edit: I will often run PerfectIt before I tackle a book manuscript to see all the inconsistency in a manuscript. I look for words not spelled correctly or even consistently (advisor, adviser, for example), for words not hyphenated correctly or consistently (nonnegotiable, non-negotiable, for example), for awkward and inconsistent capitalization of headings, and for whether the author used the serial comma and how, among many other mechanical editing areas to prereview for fine-tuning.

PerfectIt allows me to get the big picture of the work. Then I can make editorial decisions about certain usages, allowed by CMOS (US, for example, and percent, not %) and breaking the rules consistently (such as capping the job title President in a book on leadership).

I run PerfectIt again when I have completed an edit to catch any further inconsistencies in hyphenation, in particular, and everything else this powerful program flags. I often find myself leaving parens open or missing closing quotation marks, and PerfectIt keeps me as perfect as we editors can ever get.

When testing PerfectIt 5 in beta, I threw some rough drafts at it, and I have been simply amazed at the power of the link with CMOS. In the yes-you-can-teach-old-dogs-new-tricks department, I discovered a few style points I have been getting wrong. I’ll give you one example. The word vs. gets a period, and, dang it, I’ve been using vs for years. But because my new best friend flagged vs and I could click on CMOS 10.42, I could get a quick tutorial on the rule.

You can still customize and build your house style. Downloading the new version was seamless, and I understand that if you already have subscriptions to CMOS online and PerfectIt, upgrading to version 5 is free.

Will PerfectIt ever become AI and replace us as editors? I sure hope not, but this marriage with our venerable Chicago Manual of Style is one step closer to making editors appear to be superhuman (and yes CMOS via PerfectIt says superhuman is one word).

Sandra Wendel is a nonfiction book editor, NAIWE member, and author of the award-winning book Cover to Cover: What First-Time Authors Need to Know about Editing.