Editing Services

Browse my editorial services below. Don’t see what you’re looking for? Contact me and we can discuss your needs more!

Developmental Editing

This level of editing may include any or all of the following to ensure the manuscript is cohesive, engaging, and effectively communicates its intended message:

  • Structure and Organization: Review the overall structure to ensure logical progression, coherence, and effective flow of ideas or narrative.

  • Clarity and Focus: Ensure each section or chapter has a clear focus, avoiding tangents or unnecessary digressions, and maintaining relevance to the central theme.

  • Audience Appropriateness: Assess whether the tone, style, and content are suitable for the intended audience, ensuring the writing resonates with readers.

  • Pacing and Engagement: Adjust pacing to balance action and reflection, keeping the reader engaged without overwhelming or losing momentum.

  • Consistency and Continuity: Check for consistency in character behavior, facts, terminology, and other details across the work.

  • Voice and Tone: Ensure the narrative voice or authorial tone is consistent and matches the subject matter or genre, whether it's conversational, formal, humorous, etc.

  • Theme and Message: Evaluate how well the central themes or messages are woven through the text, ensuring they’re clear and impactful.

  • Character and Argument Development: For fiction, assess character depth and arcs. For nonfiction, review the development of arguments, ideas, or concepts, ensuring they are fully explained and supported.

  • Transitions and Flow: Strengthen transitions between ideas, chapters, or scenes to ensure smooth movement and logical progression.

  • Suggestions for Improvement: Offer actionable feedback on areas that need clarification, reorganization, or enhancement for greater impact or clarity.

Copyediting / Line Editing

This level of editing polishes the text, making sure that it adheres to language rules, is readable, and is free of errors:

  • Grammar and Syntax: Correct grammatical errors, including subject-verb agreement, sentence structure, and proper use of punctuation.

  • Spelling and Typos: Identify and correct spelling mistakes, typographical errors, and inconsistencies in word usage.

  • Consistency in Style: Ensure consistency in writing style, such as formatting, headings, capitalization, and usage of terms (e.g., date formats, abbreviations).

  • Word Choice and Precision: Improve clarity by refining word choice, eliminating redundancy, and ensuring precise, concise language.

  • Sentence Clarity: Edit sentences to be clear and direct, breaking up overly long or complex sentences and simplifying awkward phrasing.

  • Consistency in Tense and Point of View: Ensure consistent use of tense (past, present, future) and point of view (first, second, third person) throughout the manuscript.

  • Punctuation and Mechanics: Correct punctuation errors (commas, apostrophes, colons, etc.) to ensure proper flow and readability.

  • Formatting and Layout: Ensure proper formatting of headings, subheadings, bullet points, numbering, and paragraph breaks for consistency and readability.

  • Fact-Checking: Verify names, dates, titles, and other factual details (for nonfiction) for accuracy and correctness, checking references and citations.

  • Eliminating Repetition: Remove repetitive words, phrases, or ideas that may clutter the text or weaken the impact.

Proofreading

This level of editing generally occurs once the text has been typeset and designed and ensures that the final manuscript is clean, error-free, and ready for publication:

  • Final Spelling and Typographical Errors: Check for any lingering spelling mistakes, typos, and minor errors that were missed during earlier edits.

  • Consistency in Formatting: Ensure consistent application of fonts, font sizes, font styles (e.g., bold and italics), line spacing, margins, and other layout elements throughout the document.

  • Punctuation and Grammar: Double-check punctuation (e.g., commas, periods, quotation marks) and ensure no grammatical mistakes remain in the final copy.

  • Correct Page Numbers and Headers: Verify that page numbers, headers, and footers are correctly formatted and appear where they should across the document.

  • Consistency in Capitalization and Spelling: Confirm that terms (names, titles, acronyms) are consistently capitalized and spelled the same way throughout the book.

  • Alignment and Layout Issues: Look for any alignment issues (such as text or images being misaligned) and correct any odd line breaks or spacing problems.

  • Check for Orphaned or Widowed Lines: Ensure there are no single lines of text stranded at the beginning or end of pages (widows/orphans), which can disrupt the reading flow.

  • Image and Caption Accuracy: Verify that images, tables, and captions are correctly placed and match their references in the text.

  • Final Fact-Checking: Check that all references, citations, and hyperlinks (if applicable) are accurate and formatted correctly.