What is a Copyedit and When Do You Need One?

Copyediting tends to be what comes to mind when a person first thinks of an editor. Someone who goes in and fixes grammatical and spelling errors. But it’s so much more than that. A copyeditor also has to align the manuscript with industry standards, to ensure that your story not only reads swiftly and coherently, but that it also looks like other published works. They do this by following a style guide.

Whatsmore, a lot of writers may use copyeditor and proofreader interchangeably. But they are two separate and different stages of editing.

But why don’t we get into it and see what copyediting is all about?

Copyediting is the editing process whereby the editor focuses on correcting errors in grammar, punctuation, spelling, and consistency while ensuring the text follows specific style guidelines. It’s typically done after line editing and before the final proofreading stage.

Copyediting is essential for refining the text and preparing it for publication or submission. It ensures that the writing is not only free of errors but also appears professional, polished, and consistent with the required standards.

What does a copyedit look like?

• Grammar: The copy editor corrects grammatical errors such as subject-verb agreement, tense consistency, and sentence structure issues to ensure the writing is free of grammatical mistakes.

• Punctuation: Corrects punctuation errors, including the preferred use of commas, periods, quotation marks, colons, semicolons, and other punctuation marks to ensure the text is clear and easy to read and understand.

• Spelling: Corrects spelling mistakes, including checking for proper capitalization and ensuring the text follows the intended spelling conventions as per the preferred style guide (e.g., American vs. British English).

• Consistency: Ensures consistency throughout the text where hyphenation, capitalization, numerals, and terminology are concerned. This could involve cross-checking facts, names, and dates for accuracy.

• Abiding by style guide: The editor will follow specific style guidelines, such as those set by a publisher or style manual (e.g., AP, Chicago, MLA), or the indie author’s choice, to ensure uniformity in formatting, citation, and other stylistic elements.

• Word usage: Identifies incorrect word usage (e.g., homophones like “their” vs. “there” vs. “they’re”) and corrects it to maintain clarity and precision.

• Formatting: The editor ensures that headings, subheadings, lists, and other formatting elements are consistent and correctly applied according to the style guide.

As a copyeditor goes through your manuscript following a style guide, they’ll be creating what’s known as a style sheet. When they turn your manuscript back over to you with all the copyediting suggestions, they will also hand over this style sheet. The proofreader will obtain this style sheet and they’ll check against it to ensure that nothing is out of place.

If you’re wondering what the difference is between a copyedit and a proofread, be sure to check out this past article where I explain the very subtle but very important differences between these two services.

Is your novel at the copyediting stage? Let’s have a chat and see how I can help clean up your manuscript so that it reaches your readers at its shiniest and fullest potential!