Copy Editing
Copy Editing
Copy Editing
Whether you are an established or first-time author, a publisher, an academic , PhD student, a business person or ESL writer, copy editing will be vital to your communication and publishing success.
Copy editing involves correcting and improving written work based on established rules, guidelines and conventions. It requires an in-depth understanding of grammatical rules, punctuation guidelines and language conventions specific to Australia and other English-speaking countries.
It also involves applying knowledge of legal and moral rights and conventions, copyright laws, privacy laws, defamation laws and industry standards.
Australia has its own standards, conventions and rules about grammar, punctuation and spelling. These can be markedly different to other countries’ standards and conventions, like the USA, for example.
I provide copy editing services to improve grammar, punctuation, language choice, flow, cohesion and the formatting of a document. This service does not involve making structural editing
changes to your document or manuscript.
My copy editing service can include checks for:
Language and style consistency
- Spelling
- Capitalisation
- Hyphenation
- Abbreviation
- References
- House style
- Quantitative data, tables and figures
Visual content consistency
- Heading hierarchies
- Pagination
- Page Layout
- Menus
- Tables
- Figures
- Illustrations
- Preliminary and endmatter
- Captions
- Footnotes and endnotes
- Appendixes and glossaries
Appropriate use of language
- Punctuation
- Syntax
- Spelling
- Grammar
- Redundant words , repetitive phrases (tautologies)
- Excessive passive voice usage, jargon,colloquialisms, clichés, anachronisms
- Continuity
- Defamation
Referencing
- Accuracy of cross-references and links to other parts of the document
- Complete and consistent use of in-text and bibliographic references
- Proper acknowledgement of citation sources, direct and indirect quotations
How is copy editing performed?
Copy editing can be performed as either
hard-copy or
soft-copy editing.
I mostly perform soft-copy editing on-screen using
Microsoft Word Track Changes. Track Changes enables you to accept or reject changes to your document on-screen. If you are unfamiliar with
Track Changes, I can easily explain its features and functions to you via document or a live demonstration via video conference.
Hard-copy editing requires you to be familiar with traditional proofreading marks. These marks are standard across the editing and publishing industry but are not as widely used any more.
