Editing and proofreading

You've done all the hard work of researching and writing your study. I can help you improve it and get it ready for publication.

I offer several levels of editing and proofreading services for academics, museums, and NGOs.

You might have encountered in style guides or on the internet different terms related to various levels of editing and proofreading: copyediting (or copy editing, or even copy-editing), line editing, stylistic editing, structural editing, and so forth. Sometimes, the definitions of such terms overlap or vary by publication and country. Navigating the editing landscape can be confusing. To clear things up and help you decide what services you need, I present the following overview of the terms I use (inspired by Amy Einsohn and Marilyn Schwartz's excellent 2019 guide The Copyeditor's Handbook).

Light copyediting

This level of editing includes the following:

Mechanical editing – ensuring consistency in all mechanical matters of your text, such as spelling, capitalization, hyphenation, use of numerals, formatting of lists, and so forth. I generally do this following one of the standard styles applied in scholarly writing: Chicago, APA, MLA, and so on.

Language editing – correcting all errors in spelling, grammar, punctuation, usage, and syntax. I will also query any statements that seem to not be factual or terms that appear to be misused, and point out passages that are confusing, ambiguous, or overly wordy (but will not change them or offer suggestions).

References – Checking if references are formatted correctly (I find that most authors are not interested in this service at this level. Let me know if you need this).

Standard copyediting

This is the service I most often provide to clients, especially ones who are not native English speakers. Depending on the difficulty of the text and the quality of the writing, my "standard" approach could also be classified as medium or heavy copy editing.

This level of editing includes the following:

Mechanical editing – ensuring consistency in all mechanical matters of your text, such as spelling, capitalization, hyphenation, use of numerals, formatting of lists, and so forth. I generally do this following one of the standard styles applied in scholarly writing: Chicago, APA, MLA, and so on.

Language editing – I will correct all errors in spelling, grammar, punctuation, usage, and syntax.

I will query any statements that seem to not be factual or terms that appear to be misused. I will also make any changes here if I am able to so, indicating that I have done so in a comment.

I point out passages that are confusing, ambiguous, or overly wordy. If possible, I will reword them or provide you with recommendations or ideas how to reword them yourself. I will then check any additional changes you have made to the text and incorporate your feedback.

Proofreading

Proofreading seems to be a highly misunderstood task. Although many people use this term to refer to editing as described above, it is a final check of the text before printing or publication.

Proofreading takes place after a manuscript has been typeset, and therefore, texts that need proofreading are generally PDF files.

As a proofreader, I will read through the file, looking for and marking errors that were introduced in the typesetting and layout processes or those that went undetected during writing and editing. In the proofreading stage, I will only make minor changes to the text. If I do encounter what seems to be a major error or problem, I will point this out to you in a comment.