Copyediting services are an important process with various advantages, including enhancing the quality, reducing rejections, avoiding ambiguity, improving the manuscript’s authenticity, and accelerating publication for large publishers. Content comprehensibility, clarity of thought, and logical flow are other aspects that a copy editor will pay attention to in your content.
Copy editor ensures that your content is grammatically correct—checking for and correcting errors in sentence structure, spelling and word use, punctuation, capitalization, spacing, and so on—and appropriate factually and legally.
Copyediting services are the final step in the writing process before publication. In the publishing world, copyediting and proofreading both take place toward the end of the editing process. There is some overlap between copy editing and proofreading.
Copyediting ensures that statements logically flow from one sentence to the next while keeping the content accessible to its intended readership. Copy editors are also the gatekeepers that uphold a publication’s tone and style rules. They enforce cohesion within an individual work as well as across all works under the publication.
Proofreading is not as concerned about whether the statements and ideas are fluid and cohesive; rather they care that the words on the page look as they should. Proofreaders are responsible for fixing on-page elements. These might include inconsistent headers and subheads, page numbers and breaks, and visual assets like a table or chart, etc.
Copyediting vs Proofreading: What You Need to Know
Copyediting Means Tidying Up Writing
Copyediting services are about ensuring a text is easy to understand. Copy editing takes place after a substantive edit but before proofreading. The objective of copy editing is to polish the copy so that it is clear while retaining the author’s voice and meaning. Copy is defined as “matter to be printed,” and a copy editor is responsible for this polishing step. After a copy edit, the copy should be a cohesive, readable piece that adheres to the publication’s tone and style guidelines. They comb through a written work to identify and correct:
- Grammar
- Spelling
- Tone and style deviations
- Wordiness
- Clunky transitions
- Confusing syntax
- Problematic or misused words
- Uneven flow
Proofreading Means Final Check
Proofreading takes place after the copy editor has completed their work and before the work is published. Once a manuscript has been typeset, a publisher will create a “proof” copy or galley proof. This is a test version of a book created to check the text for errors before printing. As such, proofreading has been about fixing typos introduced during typesetting or missed during the final copy edit. A proofreader is a specialized editor who’s tasked with reviewing the mechanical elements of the copy. They are the final set of eyes to address issues involving:
- Grammar
- Spelling
- Punctuation
- Capitalization
- Formatting
- On-page layout
Copyediting Services Ensure High-Quality Manuscript
Copyediting is an important process that applies to a range of writing fields within the publishing industry. A professional copy editor needs to possess an expansive skillset involving detailed knowledge about the subject matter and strong attention to detail along with an ability to communicate their edits clearly and efficiently. In general, various types of copyediting services involve checking the following:
- Choice of words (correct usage, technical jargon or abbreviations that need to be explained, etc.)
- Mechanics (grammar, spelling, typos, punctuation)
- Writing style and consistency (active/passive voice consistency throughout the document, appropriate tone and word choice for the intended audience, etc.)
- Logical flow between ideas (checking for transitions and if they make sense)
- Text formatting (Capitalization, appropriate division of sections, text size consistency, spacing of font, etc.)
- Clarity of writing (how easy is it to understand the main idea of sentences/paragraphs)
- Accuracy of facts, citations, or quotes.
Professional Copyediting Services
Copyediting services revise written content to ensure better clarity and accuracy of the content. They can take a rough draft full of errors, including spelling mistakes, grammar, language, and style issues, and turn it into a piece of writing ready for publication. Besides, they also collaborate with the author to improve the original draft and reshape it into a piece ready to be published. The copyeditor brings the required expertise to the overall writing process, it is up to the author or publisher to guide that expertise.
Copyediting services are the last step in preparing a document’s content. Getting help from a professional copyediting service will enhance your document by
- Eliminating grammatical, typographical, and consistency errors
- Improving clarity, readability, and overall language quality
- Using terminology appropriate for the document’s subject matter
- Ensuring that the tone and style used are appropriate for the document’s purpose (e.g., academic style for research papers, oral delivery style for speeches and presentations, promotional style for website content)
- Using suitable writing conventions
- Following the formatting & stylistic requirements of the journal/publisher or the style manual commonly referred to in the field
Among other things of copyediting services, mainly, copy editors work towards enhancing your content as mentioned below:
- Clarity and tone
- Grammar and punctuation
- Plot consistency
- Transitions
- Sentence structure
Copyediting Services Prepping
When using copyediting services prior to publishing the content, it is important to set out the expectations and schedule before the actual process of copyediting begins. Some of the things that need to be addressed include:
- Clearly defining the copyeditor’s role. For instance, whether you require the copyeditor to check just grammar and spelling or if you want them to scan the entire text for overall clarity, consistency, and style as well
- Developing a detailed copyediting services schedule. For instance, whether you need copyediting to be done once the manuscript is complete or as and when the chapter is completed
- Communicating and clarifying which style guide and editing/styling references need to be used for the manuscript
- Allowing copyeditor to make common grammatical, styling, and spelling changes directly as they have both expertise and authority in this area
- Determining and communicating which sections and elements of the content (text, in-text citations, figures and table captions, attribution statements, etc.) should be copyedited to save everyone time
- Communicating to the copyeditor to keep a comprehensive list of items that the author should review, such as subject-related questions, text that requires significant rewrites, etc.
Benefits of Copyediting Services
Some of the key benefits of using copyediting services for both multinational and vernacular publishers include:
- Enhances accuracy: Copyediting services help you improve the overall accuracy of the content. Since copyeditors look at the content with an objective view, it helps them ask questions in case anything is unclear, thus improving the accuracy and flow of the piece.
- Formats errors: Another important priority for a copy editor is highlighting and suggesting corrections to various grammatical errors, punctuation, spelling, and syntax. While a proofreader can also tackle these areas, a copy editor still needs to address them as they may affect the contents of the work itself.
- Accelerates publishing: One of the other benefits of copyediting services is that it helps in accelerating the overall publication process, especially for large publishers. It is primarily because reviewers only have to concentrate on the content of the manuscript.
- Altering duplicate of the original copy also helps speed up the distribution as the analysts have to focus only on the original copy’s substance. Post copyediting services, there are minimal possibilities of the manuscript being sent to update syntactic mistakes or fix other common errors.
- Reduce chances of rejections: There are high chances that publishers may dismiss the initial manuscript due to grammatical errors, inconsistency in the design, critical ambiguity in the substance, and other similar issues. Copyediting helps in reducing the instances of manuscript rejection because of such issues in the content.
- Enables better word choice usage: Copyediting services help in elevating the selection of words. Since diverse specialized fields have specific word structures and jargon, leveraging the right set of words improves the overall nature of the content.
- Checks for consistency: A copy editor needs to be very detail-oriented as one of their key responsibilities is to thoroughly go through the given work and ensure that all the details are consistent. Among these include descriptions of settings, characters, terminology, etc.
- Fact checks: The copyediting services or process can also involve thorough research, especially when editing nonfiction works. In case there is no specialized fact-checker working on a publication, the copy editor also verifies various dates, facts, and events to maintain factual accuracy.