Which Service Is Right For You?
If you’re unsure which service you need, more detail is provided below to help you decide. Exact requirements will always be agreed during initial consultation to ensure it suits your needs.
Copyediting
This is carried out on draft text, before the design and formatting has been finalised. It will include re-writing to improve on voice and flow. Some aspects it includes checking are:
grammar; spelling; punctuation; layout; formatting; consistency; document clean-up; fact-checking; styles; and markup.
Proofreading
This happens after design and formatting has been completed and is a final check of the document. Some aspects it includes checking are:
grammar; spelling; punctuation; layout – including spacing between headers, paragraphs and words; formatting – including font size and style; consistency; headers and footers; typos and mistypes; punctuation including style of; displayed material – bullet lists, numbered lists, charts and tables; figures; references; and bibliographies.
Proof-editing
A mixture of copyediting and proofreading! The exact aspects covered can be agreed during consultation, along with which types of changes should just be made and which should be marked up.
House Styles
A house style is a document that records the decisions made to ensure consistency throughout all documentation written by a company. A house style should be provided so that this can be referred to when conducting a final check of a document. If a house style is not provided, proof-editors are likely to compile a style sheet to record the decisions that appear most frequently throughout the document to ensure any inconsistencies are corrected. The types of decisions that are made and recorded in a house style are:
Formatting and Styles
~ Headers and sub-headers
~ Paragraphs
~ Lists
~ Other displayed material
Spelling
~ General
~ Language
Punctuation
~ Serial commas
~ Hyphenations
~ En or Em rules
~ Quotation marks
General Text
~ Emphasising words
~ Capitalisation
~ Small capitals
Abbreviations, Acronyms and Contractions
Numbers
~ Numerals or words
~ Quantifiers
~ Commas and decimal places
~ Dates and times
Why AI is not Enough
Hopefully it’s clear how much is involved in these editorial services, but for more information on why AI is not the answer, see my page on AI!