Meet the copy editors behind bestsellers
A copy editor does more than address grammatical errors. They improve your manuscript's readability, ensure your book adheres to the right style sheet, and fine-tune your prose.
On Reedsy, meet editors with years of copy editing experience at Big 5 publishers. Our editors have an ear for beautiful, readable sentences and understand the ins and outs of different style guides.
What can you expect from a Reedsy copy editor?
A copy editor is a type of editor who polishes a piece of writing, ensuring it's error-free, consistent in style, and readable. While they do check grammar and punctuation, they primarily focus on improving clarity, cohesion, and accuracy while adhering to established style sheets.
On Reedsy, you can expect for editors to thoroughly go through your text, making changes that include eliminating redundancies while making sure that your own personal style remains intact through smaller details such as hyphenation and capitalization.
Importantly, a copy editor will also strengthen the prose throughout. They will substitute weak words, phrases, and sentences with powerful alternatives, often restructuring sentences for improved clarity. Once your manuscript has been copy edited, it will become more efficient, accurate, and focused on your voice.
Note that while the purview of a copy editor will vary from contract to contract, most copy editors will not handle "big picture" issues such as characterization, plot, or structure. Those responsibilities fall to a developmental editor. Copy editing takes a closer view of a manuscript by focusing on individual sentences and paragraphs.
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FAQs
What are the different standards of copy editing?
Individual copy editors consult a range of manuals for copy editing, including The Chicago Manual of Style, The Associated Press Stylebook, and Words into Type, to correct errors and fix inconsistencies in details such as number treatment, compound words, and punctuation. Questions they’ll address include: should numbers appear as numerals or be spelled out? Should compound words be open, closed, or hyphenated? Do you need a comma or semicolon?
For example, we decided to write “copy editing” and “copy editor” without hyphenation on this page. We had a copy editor review it to make sure we did so consistently.
To keep track of the styles in use in a single manuscript, copy editors create a style sheet as they edit, which functions as an organized way for an editor to maintain consistency and communicate a manuscript’s style to the author and future proofreaders. A novel’s style sheet, for instance, might include notes on typography, punctuation, numbers, and spellings; a list of characters, real people, and places; and a timeline of events.
What is the difference between line editing and copy editing?
“Line editing” is a term we’ve chosen not to use in our editing services definitions. This is because its meaning can vary wildly depending on whether you’re in the UK — where it’s akin to proofreading — or in North America — where it’s an intermediary step between developmental and copy editing.
In its US definition, line editing addresses the creative content of a manuscript rather than mechanics like punctuation, grammar, factual correctness, and consistency. A line editor looks at the author’s use of language and offers advice to improve the readability of a manuscript. They will address issues like stiff dialogue, tonal inconsistencies, run-on sentences, and other tics that may affect the reading experience.
Most copy editors on Reedsy are also trained in line editing and will seek to correct both creative content and mechanical issues in their editing pass. In other words, most copy editors will both line edit and copy edit, which is why we’ve chosen to skip this “step” in our definitions. We recommend that authors first hire a developmental editor, then a copy editor, and finally a proofreader.