Copyediting services

REFINE YOUR NON-FICTION WRITING WITH A PROFESSIONAL COPYEDIT

Your words are down on the page – now it’s time to enhance them

You’ve spent significant time writing your text, and you’re so familiar with your subject matter. But this can often mean you can’t view it objectively in the same way your audience would. This is where copyediting comes in.

Copyediting is a technical edit designed to look at the mechanics of your writing – it can help to smooth ambiguities, clunky areas, tonal shifts, or points that haven’t been explained clearly.

What do copyediting services at Eaves Editorial include?

Copyediting is a problem-solving edit. Your text will be marked up with corrections, edits, and suggestions. There will be a strong focus on maintaining consistency and correctness, including edits to fix grammar, punctuation, and spelling, as well as looking at finer details such as numbering systems, cross-references, light-fact checking, comparing any illustrations or tables with the text, checking references and citations, and so on. Copyediting goes deeper if the text requires it, addressing intended meaning, ambiguous sections of text, vague areas, unclear sentences, and repetition.

A copyedit ensures all the “parts” are clearly identifiable and ready for the next editorial stage if the work is going to print – from headings and subheadings to bibliographies – as well as applying professional editorial standards such as style guides.

Copyediting done to professional standards

  • Application of an industry-standard style guide to bring the work in line with publishing standards. This could be a house style developed by a publisher or business, or another specific style guide, such as The Chicago Manual of Style or New Hart’s Rules (Oxford style).
  • Creation of a style sheet. This is an editorial document that keeps track of the copyeditor’s decisions. It ensures a proofreader doesn’t override any agreed-upon changes, and it can be passed to a typesetter to help them with layout and formatting work.
  • Fully marked-up text in Microsoft Word, using Track Changes, so you can view edits and commentary in detail and choose whether to accept or reject edits. You can also respond to copyediting queries directly.
  • An editorial review of any changes made based on the edit within two months – to ensure no errors have crept in during revisions.

  • Rachel is professional in her approach, kind and generous in both her attitudes and sharing her knowledge, and is extremely proficient with the work she does.

    katherine swailes
    Freelance Editor
interested?

Schedule your copyedit

You can request a no-obligation quote using the contact form below.