Copyediting

As your copyeditor, my concern is for clarity, coherency, consistency, and correctness. Copyediting at all levels involves:

• Correcting grammar, punctuation, and spelling
• Ensuring consistency in hyphenation, capitalization, and abbreviations
• Checking syntax, for repetition, and for inconsistencies
• Fact-checking (names, dates, etc.)
• Noting passages of text, tables, or illustrations that require permission to reprint
• Ensuring clear organization and formatting

There are three levels of copyediting: light, medium, and heavy. Light copyediting involves attending to all the matters above; bringing attention to convoluted passages (but not revising them); asking for clarification of terms that may be new to readers; and querying factual inconsistencies and statements that appear to be incorrect.

Medium copyediting, additionally, involves bringing your attention to convoluted passages and offering suggested revisions; supplying definitions of terms that may be new to readers; querying seemingly incorrect facts; and querying faults in organization and gaps in the logic of the work (should they exist!).

Heavy copyediting involves pointing out, correcting, and revising all errors; revising convoluted passages; verifying and revising factual errors; and querying or fixing faults in organization and gaps in the logic of the work.

I will be able to advise which level of copyediting your manuscript will benefit from once I have reviewed a sample.

In most cases, I will perform one round (two editorial passes) of copyediting before providing you with the copyedited manuscript for your review. I will also provide a style sheet—a record of editorial choices and decisions relating to everything from spelling and capitalization to noting special symbols used and any required permissions to reprint information from copyrighted sources—which will be used during publication should questions relating to these matters arise.

Once you have reviewed the manuscript, I will do a final round of editing to ensure the document continues to adhere to the high standards set during the initial two editorial passes and that no new errors have been introduced—we want things to be perfect, after all!

I am happy to provide a free sample edit of a page or so for you to confirm I’m the right editor for you.

It is often necessary to edit to and from American and British English. For example, many UK-based academic journals and publishers require manuscripts be localized to American English. And when applying to college or university across the pond it is important to speak the lingo.

I localize between American English and British English using The Chicago Manual of Style and Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary, and the New Oxford Style Manual and New Oxford Dictionary for Writers and Editors.