Here is a quick guide to the four key stages that can occur within an editorial process. These are developmental editing, content editing, copy editing, and proofreading. We can offer to work with you in one or all of these processes.
- Developmental editing is where the editor works with the author(s) in helping them to develop their ideas; this can be anything from character development in stories, or plot planning, to sequencing of the content, or of approaches to content delivery and practice in a course.
- Content editing is where the editor reads the draft of the author’s (or authors’) text and checks for quality in terms of the accuracy, effectiveness, coherence, style, and consistency of the content of the book.
- Copy editing is where the editor checks for design consistency, in terms of headings, bullets, paragraphing etc, and checks choices in terms of vocabulary (both everyday and technical) and idiom, grammar (both analytic and syntactic), spelling, punctuation, and cohesion, making suggestions for improvements.
- Proofreading is where the editor checks the designed and typeset text, or proofs, against the previous version of the text and searches for discrepancies between the two. It’s mostly a checking procedure, but I do suggest minor rewrites where appropriate.
With all of the procedures described, we show all suggested changes in Word’s Track Changes and make comments alongside the text at each point where necessary; where there are general issues worthy of note, these are described within a separate document – this is particularly the case with developmental and content editing.
It’s important to be informed of the preferred mode of the language, such as whether it should be in UK, US, Canadian, Australian etc. English, and if there are any styling rules (including such matters as preferred spelling and preferred punctuation) that need to be employed.
Our rates for the different categories of editing are as follows:
- Developmental editing: £20.00 per 2000 words
- Content editing: £17.00 per 2000 words
- Copy editing: £17.00 per 1000 words
- Proofreading: £10.00 per 1000 words
We can happily come up with a custom offer, where needed, and particularly if you are looking for some form of ‘mix and match’ of the editorial processes described here.