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When editing posts for grammar and spelling, try to keep edits light handed. A few simple rules I try to use:

If you are editing a post because it is incorrect (Starp -> Strap) then it's a good cleanup edit.

If you are editing a post because it's unclear, then it's also a good edit.

If you are changing something that is clear and correct, but not the way you would say it... that's a bad edit. You are replacing the authors voice with your own.

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    A quick addendum - if it's one spelling mistake in a whole post, and it's not an important one, ask yourself whether it is worth changing. If yes, please fully review the rest of the post to take care of anything else that should be cleaned up at the same time.
    – Rory Alsop Mod
    Jun 5, 2016 at 18:21
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    Thanks Rory, guilty of that myself sometimes :)
    – Russell Steen
    Jun 5, 2016 at 18:35
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    I will often break a question up to stop the "thisisareallylongquestionallontheonelineanditsveryhardtoread" type stuff too. Basically adding a few Cr and make a lot of difference to readability. Valid?
    – user2766
    Jun 7, 2016 at 15:01
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    @Liam -- IMO - readability is valid in that sense. At some point it's a judgement call. I'm just seeing an uptick of what I would consider style edits.
    – Russell Steen
    Jun 7, 2016 at 22:14
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    I just read this after doing the kind of edit @RoryAlsop mentioned. I only do such edits if the question has just had activity. Often it is an older question that got to the top spot by a late answer/edit, so I have never seen it before and while reading I notice minor mistakes, so I clean them up. I thought this was ok as I am not bumping this question up the activity list. Bad idea?
    – imsodin
    Jun 9, 2016 at 12:08
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    Imsodin - it it has just been bumped anyway, and you have a bunch of fixes you can do, I reckon it's good to do them.
    – Rory Alsop Mod
    Jun 9, 2016 at 12:19
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    The only other type of edit I do is really missing words - rather than spelling mistakes - usually this comes from people with native languages where they don't use the small words (a, to, by, etc) so often so the translation to them makes sense but in English it's a little off :)
    – Aravona
    Jun 14, 2016 at 11:51

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