Professional Copyediting

Copyediting involves line-by-line editing for grammar, spelling, punctuation, sentence structure, flow, and voice. There are two levels of copyediting that I can offer:

Mechanical Editing
A mechanical edit ensures the nuts and bolts of your copy are functioning correctly, like a smoothly running machine. Is your grammar sound? Does your punctuation work well? Are your word choices optimal, or is there some wording that could be stronger or more concise? These are all aspects I consider when I do mechanical editing.

Substantive Editing
With a substantive edit, I can become more involved with the copy, massaging it to help it shine. This is where I can do some reorganizing when needed, ensuring ideas flow logically from one to the next. I can also improve the tone in places to make it consistent throughout the piece or help it to more effectively speak to the intended audience. Everything done with a mechanical edit is also done here, but when doing substantive editing, I can get more involved in reshaping a piece of writing (only when necessary, of course!). This takes a little bit more time, so I charge slightly more. (But it’s
worth it!) When you’ve incorporated my edits, the text will be ready to publish. In some cases, you may want to hire a proofreader to take a final look.

Professional Proofreading

Proofreading is usually the last stop before publishing and includes catching every possible mistake such as misspellings, spacing and line-break issues, incorrect page numbers, and more. For a piece of writing to be ready for proofreading, it needs to already be fairly carefully edited by the writer or someone else. During proofreading, I will take several passes to ensure I catch every possible mistake. I have a reliable system for ensuring that everything gets flagged.