Editorial services: editing, proofreading and formatting
If you’re writing anything that’s going to be read by other people, you’ve done the right thing by looking for editorial services to help you publish. It’s very difficult to see the stumbling blocks in something you’ve written yourself, and your readers will thank you for clearing their path to understanding.
What sort of editorial help you need will depend on what your text is, what stage it is at, what you intend to do with it and what needs to be done before it’s published.
My free infographic will help you work out what stage of the publishing process you’re at and who can help. Or read on for more information about editorial services I offer:
Copy-editing
Fixing your words before you prepare your final publication format.
Proofreading
A final quality check of your words and layout before publishing.
Formatting, design and layout
Fixing the look or prepping your text for a designer or typesetter.
I have just incorporated the changes that you suggested and would like to thank you for your excellent work. I found it very easy to understand your comments, and I am very impressed by the consistent attention that you paid to the document from beginning to end.
Andrew Betts, Iconda Solutions
– business book
Fix my words: editing
Editing and proofreading are part of the same process of language editing: fixing your words before publishing. It’s not about right or wrong. It’s not about judging you or your writing. It’s about helping you shape your text so that your words best communicate what you’re trying to say.
I’ll assess your text document and give you my professional advice on what changes will get it ready for publishing. But it’s a collaboration: you’ll always have final say on your content.
Editing can include:
- Checking spelling, punctuation and grammar.
- Making your text consistent, for example in spelling choices, capitalisation, punctuation, hyphens and terminology.
- Making suggestions to improve flow, readability and clarity to suit your readers, to replace jargon with plain English or to bring cohesion to a team-written text.
- Marking any content that’s missing, incomplete or in the wrong order.
- Querying possible factual errors.
- Flagging potential legal or sensitivity issues.
- Marking up the structure of the text so it’s ready for formatting or sending to a designer, such as heading levels, boxed text, features, quotes and images.
Proofreading includes checking your formatted document after it’s been edited for remaining minor errors in spelling, punctuation, grammar and consistency, and checking for problems with the layout, such as wrong page numbers, misalignments, incorrect heading levels and broken links.
Fix my formatting
I can create a clear and consistent final layout for your text, book or document so that it looks professional and gets your message across. Or I can clean up your final draft so that it’s ready to go to your own typesetter or designer. My formatting services include:
- Book and document design and layout.
- Cleaning up messy formatting in Word documents.
- Creating styles and templates in Word and InDesign.
- Creating accessible PDFs.
Help me publish
If you’re a self-publishing independent author, I can help you with both editing your text and formatting it for print, PDF or ebook. And if you need services that I don’t provide (such as marketing or finding a good printing company), I’ll point you to useful resources or contacts.
Competition in book sales is fierce and readers will soon become disengaged or leave bad reviews if your book doesn’t look good or function well. I can create a great interior design for you and provide the files you need for publishing print books and ebooks.
A professional job will help your book sit comfortably alongside traditionally published titles.