Line editing

What line editing is

Line editing is the edit of how your writing sounds. It works one sentence at a time on rhythm, word choice, sentence length and the order of clauses, so that the finished piece reads as one person speaking clearly rather than a document assembled out of parts. The facts stay. The argument stays. The order of the sections stays. What changes is the sound of it.

It sits in the middle of the ladder. Structural editing is the level above: it moves whole sections and decides what the document is for. Copyediting is the level below: it makes each sentence correct. A line edit does neither. It will not reorder your sections and it is not hunting for errors. Two sentences can both be perfectly grammatical, and only one of them can be read aloud without the reader running out of breath. That gap is the whole job.

Said plainly: a line edit will not catch every typo. Typos are not what this pass looks at, and an editor hunting rhythm walks past a doubled word twice. The last check for those is proofreading, which is the cheapest thing I do, and I recommend it after every line edit.

When you need one

The commonest case is a document that is right and still lifeless. Everything in it is true, nothing is wrong, and nobody gets to the end. A guide written by the person who knows the most and enjoys writing the least. Web pages drafted in a hurry that read like a form. A founder letter that sounds as though a lawyer wrote it because, in a sense, one did.

The second case is a voice problem rather than an error problem. It sounds like a brochure when it should sound like the person who does the work. Long sentences carrying three ideas each, every verb buried in a noun, the same shape forty times over. None of that is incorrect. All of it is tiring.

You do not need a line edit if the draft is close and you mainly want it right: buy a copyedit instead and keep the difference. You do not need one if readers call the document confusing rather than dull, because that is a structure problem, and polishing sentences that are about to move is money burnt. If the piece is well written and simply says too much, ask about cutting it down. I say which of the four you are buying on the first call.

What gets worked on

• Sentence length. Business drafts settle into one length and stay there. Breaking a 40-word sentence in two and following it with a five-word one is most of what makes prose feel like speech.
• Verbs. Flat writing hides its action inside a noun: "carried out an assessment of" instead of "assessed". Freeing the verb shortens the sentence and sharpens it at once.
• The order inside a sentence. English puts weight at the end. A sentence finishing on a qualification throws away its own point; the same words, rearranged, land it.
• Stock phrases. The filler a writer reaches for while thinking: "in terms of", "going forward", "at this point in time". Removing them costs nothing and gives the room to something worth reading.
• Voice. Whether it sounds like your business. If you have voice guidelines, I edit towards them. If not, I edit towards how you talk on the phone, which is usually better than what got typed.

What you get

The marked-up copy. Your document with tracked changes, so you see every rewritten sentence beside the original. This matters more here than in other edits: a line edit changes wording, and you should be able to overrule anything you dislike. A rejected change is not a failure, it is the point of showing you.

The clean copy. Everything accepted, in the format you sent, ready to use.

A one-page note on the patterns. Not a list of changes but a list of habits: the three or four things I fixed a hundred times each. Writers who read that page once tend to stop, which makes the next document cheaper to edit.

A worked example

An illustration, not a client. A Halifax firm servicing commercial refrigeration has an 18-page guide for restaurant owners on keeping a walk-in cooler running through a hot summer. The owner wrote it himself, and the knowledge in it is unavailable anywhere else. The prose averages 34 words a sentence, opens eleven paragraphs with "It is important to note that", and uses "conduct an inspection of" nine times.

The line edit takes three working days. Sentences come down to an average of 17 words, with short ones used deliberately where a point has to land. Buried verbs come out. The guide loses about 900 words without a single fact leaving it. The owner reverses four changes, because in each case the original wording was the trade term and I was wrong to touch it, and accepts the rest. The guide now sounds like him at a service call, which is what made customers trust him to begin with. It then goes for a proofread, because a line edit is not a typo hunt.

How it runs

1. A half-hour call. What the piece is, who reads it, and whether a line edit is the right level. If it is not, I say so. No charge.
2. A fixed price in writing. Based on word count and the state of the draft, agreed before I start.
3. You send the final draft. Final matters here more than anywhere: sentences I rewrite that you then rewrite undo the work. Voice guidelines come with it.
4. The edit. One pass aloud, one on the page, then a cold read a day later. Three to five working days under 10,000 words.
5. Delivery. Marked-up copy, clean copy and the patterns note, with a short call if you want to argue any of it.

What it costs

Line editing is quoted as a fixed price in CAD after the half-hour call, because the work varies with the state of the draft. A capable writer having an off day is quick; a document written by committee over two years is not. The price is agreed in writing and does not move unless the document does. The pricing page shows the four ways I work, so you can see where a one-off edit sits against them.

What happens next

Most people take the next step down the ladder: a copyedit for correctness, then a proofread of the laid-out version. If the edit showed that every writer in the business has different habits, a written style guide stops it recurring. If the same document has to reach a second audience in a different register, that is tone adjustment, quoted separately. None of it is assumed. A line edit is a complete job, and the document is usable the day it comes back.