Copyediting

What copyediting is

Copyediting is the sentence-by-sentence edit of a finished draft that corrects grammar, punctuation, spelling, usage and consistency, and checks that each sentence says what its writer meant. It leaves the argument, the order and the voice alone. You wrote it; after a copyedit it is still yours, only correct.

It is not proofreading, which is a last check on the laid-out version and assumes the sentences are already right. Nor is it line editing, which reworks rhythm and word choice, or structural editing, which moves sections around. Most people who ask for "a quick edit" mean a copyedit, and most of the time they are right.

Who this is for

A business that writes its own material and needs it to leave the building without errors. The annual report the accountant drafted. The proposal three partners wrote a section of each. The forty-page guide a subject expert produced who knows the subject far better than the semicolon. The website a competent marketer wrote in a hurry. In every case the thinking is done and the writing is close; it needs a second pair of eyes that knows the rules.

It is not for a draft whose problem is that it does not work. If the document is in the wrong order, says too much, or misses the point the reader came for, a copyedit will polish the wrong thing. That needs a structural edit first. And if what you really want is a page that reads differently, not just correctly, ask about a page rewrite. I tell you which you need on the first call, before you pay for either.

What gets looked at

Every sentence, against a fixed list. Grammar and punctuation, obviously, but also the things a spell-checker cannot see.

• Usage. The word that is almost right: "comprise" for "compose", "less" for "fewer", "which" for "that". Each one costs a careful reader a flicker of trust.
• Consistency. The product called three things, the client's name spelled two ways, "e-mail" on one page and "email" on the next, numbers as words in one paragraph and figures in the next. I keep a style sheet as I go and apply every decision throughout.
• Sense. The sentence that is grammatical and still says the opposite of what you meant, usually because of a misplaced "only" or a pronoun that could refer to two things.
• Accuracy on the surface. Dates that do not add up, a total that does not match the figures above it, a heading that promises something the section does not deliver. I do not trace every claim to a source; that is fact-checking. I do catch what is visibly wrong.
• House style. Canadian spelling, Chicago style for anything not covered, and your own conventions if you have a style guide. If you do not, the style sheet I produce becomes the start of one.

What you get

Three files, delivered together.

The clean copy. Your document with every change accepted, ready to use. Same format you sent it in, so it drops straight back into your workflow.

The marked-up copy. The same document with tracked changes, so you can see every deletion and insertion and reject any you disagree with. Most clients read this one once, accept everything, and keep it for the record.

The editor's note. One page. The style sheet of decisions I made on spelling, capitals, numbers and terms, so the next document can follow them. Then the queries: the handful of places where only you can say which of two versions is true, listed with the page number and the question.

A worked example

An illustration, not a client. A commercial flooring contractor has a 22-page capability document that goes out with every tender. Four people wrote it over three years. The company's name appears with and without "Ltd.", the flagship product is "QuietStep", "Quiet Step" and "Quietstep" on different pages, one section uses metric and another imperial, and the warranty is described as ten years on page four and "a decade or more" on page nineteen.

The copyedit takes four working days. About 300 individual changes, nearly all small: 41 of them are the product name alone. The editor's note carries nine queries, the most important being which warranty term is correct, because the wrong one is a contractual promise. The document that goes out with the next tender says one thing about the warranty, spells its own product one way, and reads as though one person wrote it. Nothing about the offer changed. What changed is that a buyer reading it closely no longer finds reasons to doubt the rest.

How it runs

1. A half-hour call. What the document is, who reads it, what it has to do, and whether a copyedit is the right level. No charge.
2. A fixed price in writing. Based on the word count and the state of the draft, agreed before I start.
3. You send the final draft. Final matters: an edit of a draft that then changes is an edit paid for twice. Any existing style guide or list of preferred terms comes with it.
4. The edit. Two passes, one for sense and one for consistency, then a cold read. Three to five working days for a document under 10,000 words.
5. Delivery. Clean copy, marked-up copy and the note. A short call if any query needs talking through.

What it costs

Copyediting is quoted as a fixed price in CAD after the half-hour call, and the price does not change unless the document does. It depends on three things: the word count, how much the draft needs (a clean draft by a good writer is faster than one that fought its author), and how quickly you need it back. The pricing page explains how edits are quoted and what is included.

What happens next

Usually nothing more is needed; the document goes out. If it is going through design or layout afterwards, a proofread of the final version catches what the design stage introduces. If the edit turned up a pattern, such as the same terms settled differently in every document, a style guide stops it recurring. And if your team publishes every month, the same edit can run on a schedule as blog editing.