This style of editing is lighter and often quicker. It’s essentially your lastedit. Theoretically, proofreading is designed for last-minute editing. The author’s previous editors may have already caught the bulk of errors. Proofreading is designed to catch typos, the overlooked missing commas, and/or a sentence or two that may not sound quite right. I edit the whole document in this phase of editing, or I may edit a portion of it per the author’s request. Below is a summarized list of what I check in each document. Please contact me for further questions. All fiction and non-fiction genres accepted (no erotica).
I use three different style guides in my edits: The Chicago Manual of Style, The Associated Press Stylebook and the New Oxford Style Manual. Unless you specify which one I am I to use, all edits will be in accordance to grammatical, punctuation and stylistic rules listed in The Chicago Manual of Style.
Copy editing, line editing and proofreading includes checks for:
- Grammar and word usage:
- Spelling differences between American English and British English.
- All parts of speech and their components – correction to verbs, pronouns and preposition, adverbs and adjectives especially.
- Plurals and possessives.
- Sentence structure – all types of sentences but, especially run-ons.
- Word usage in accordance to AmE and BrE.
- Punctuation Preciseness:
- Capitalization of proper nouns as opposed to lowercase identical spellings (because they often have different meanings). Correction to capitalization in accordance to BrE stylistic rules when needed.
- Correct usage of commas and semicolons; brackets and parentheses, hyphens and dashes, full stops and periods, etc.
- Removal of double spaces where they interfere with text flow.
- Removal of the full stop after abbreviations. (BrE).
- Checks for correct usage of acronyms and/or abbreviations.
- Changing double quotation marks to singular quotation marks. (BrE).
- Numbers:
- Spelling out vs. using numerals for numbers.
- Correction of date(s) whenever necessary (per the author’s request). For example, AmE writers write January 1, 2019 while BrE writers write dates 1 January 2019).
- Correction to times in AmE (5:39 am) and BrE (5.39 am).
- Checks for correct numbering of chapters and sections.
- Checks for correct usage of number ranges, fractions and units of measurement.
- Checks for correct usage of Roman numerals.
- Additional Edits:
- Edits to all titles, images, quotations, headings and sub-headings.
- Light formatting to paragraphs and spacing, lists or text. Please note: I do not format full-length books at this time.