
Copyediting
The primary goal of a light to medium copyedit is to make your writing as clear, professional, and consistent as possible. Grammar, phrasing, and word choice are given special attention, and some light fact-checking will help ensure the final product is sound. If you don’t have an in-house or project style guide (or haven’t a clue what that is), don’t worry! I make my own for each manuscript, so word choice, peculiar spellings, punctuation preferences, and numerical guidelines always stay constant.
This covers:
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Errors and inconsistencies in all mechanical matters (spelling, grammar, syntax, punctuation, capitalization, hyphenation, format of lists, abbreviations, etc.)
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Typeface, font, and formatting issues
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Consistency (from a style guide, if available)
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Bibliographies and reference lists (if included)
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Page correlation and numbering of footnotes, endnotes, figures, and in-text references
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Minor redundancies and awkward word choice
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Minor rephrasing through queries
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Simple fact-checking