All professional writers are acutely aware that their first draft is full of grammar mishaps, jargon, and incorrect spacing, among other errors. But that isn’t where we typically begin the editing cycle: The most efficient publishing process requires you to first focus on revising to improve the “big picture,” typically with the help of a developmental editor. In fact, it’s only after you’ve gotten your draft into publishable shape that it’s time to turn your attention to those minor issues again.
At this point, you might proudly have the manuscript of an action-packed novel that promises to spark lots of thoughts and imagination in the readers’ minds. But you aren’t done quite yet. After weeks or even months immersed in your masterpiece, it will be almost impossible to spot each of these errors by merely trusting your eyes or your favorite word processing software’s built-in spellchecker.
This is the time when we bring in an individual proficient in copyediting services. The hired professional will work hand-in-hand with the writer to copy edit the manuscript and give it that final polish to ensure that your writing is clear, correct, and readable.
So, what exactly is a copy editor? Let’s look at this copy editing thing in detail.
What Is Copy Editing?
Often abbreviated as Ce or CE, copy editing or copyediting simply refers to the work done by an editor to enhance a book’s style, tone, and accuracy. Special attention is paid to issues of grammar or syntax, spelling, punctuation, consistency, clarity, and continuity.
As a result, the final product after the process of copy editing ought to be accurate, smoothly readable, and error-free. Additionally, it must be vivid, understandable, and devoid of amateur mistakes including needless repetition and inconsistencies.
Copy Editing and Proofreading – The Big Gap
From a layman’s point of view, there’s hardly any difference between copy editing and proofreading. But if you ask a professional editor, he or she will certainly explain that these two words carry many differences in their meaning. In fact, the gap is bigger than you might imagine.
1. Copy editing comes before proofreading. One, and often the simplest, way to differentiate the two is by considering where they are called into action. Copy editing comes immediately before the design process and pertains to spelling, punctuation, syntax, consistency, clarity, and continuity. Paradoxically, proofreading comes at the very end, before the final masterpiece is out, and pertains mainly to making a final pass on the spelling, punctuation, and formatting of the piece.
2. Copy editing is performed on the manuscript; proofreading is performed on proof pages. In a traditional book production flow, copy editors mark up the author’s manuscript file. As mentioned previously, this is before the design stage. However, the proofreader won’t step in until the book is designed and laid out, either working with hard copy proofs or on PDF files. Occasionally proofreaders work with the design files themselves in programs like Adobe InDesign, though this isn’t ideal as new errors can easily be introduced accidentally. This is a critical distinction since proofreading includes an examination of design elements to ensure consistency with things like typography, line and margin spacing, and more.
3. Copy editing can alter style; proofreading should only alter facts. Copy editing entails all those actions meant for improving the flow and quality of a piece. A copy editor has the freedom to add and do away with a phrase in addition to correcting obvious redundancies and errors. In contrast, a proofreader will not add or remove anything, but only check the logical flow of the article and review grammar and punctuation—sometimes even comparing designed pages to the copy edited file to ensure all changes were made—correcting typos and highlighting formatting errors such as an incorrect font used for a header or the wrong page number appearing. With many printers, making substantial revisions in the proofreading stage can incur heavy fees since the changes will affect the design, page flow, and sometimes even require creating new file sets.
To read more about proofreading, check out our article on the subject.
What Makes A Copy Editor Great?
Just as the draft is important, a great copy editor makes a manuscript stunning and comprehensible. However, not every copy editor is skilled enough to add creative, thought-provoking ideas to the piece. To be a great copy editor, one must have adequately learned the dos and don’ts of this expertise and mastered each and every detail with pinpoint accuracy.
A copy editor is expected to not only ensure that the script is an overall complete picture of all of the writer’s relevant ideas, but also to identify any missing links with respect to details like checking the text vis-à-vis the table of contents.
What are the traits of a competent copy editor? According to some, excellent copy editors “make the piece say what it means and mean it.” The five fundamental traits driving a copy editor are known as “The Five C’s”:
• Clear – Ensuring that the work is clear often goes beyond correction to smooth out awkward phrasing or word choices that might, strictly speaking, be correct and yet leave the meaning a bit vague.
• Correct – This can mean everything from correcting typos and spelling or grammatical errors to research and fact-checking, depending on the service level you need.
• Concise – Redundancy and repetition abound in amateur drafts, so a great copy editor will often help trim passages down for best impact.
• Comprehensible –A great copy editor will help make sure the reader “gets” what the author intended by enhancing sentence or paragraph structure and offering alternative word choices or phrasing where appropriate.
• Consistent – Because the major style guides (such as the Chicago Manual of Style) often leave room for customized choices, it’s important to make sure the author implements those options consistently so as not to confuse readers.
[TIP: You can even apply the Five Cs to your writing for stronger fiction.]
The General Perception Surrounding Copy Editing
In general, the work of a copy editor is perceived as more important than that of a proofreader since it is more of an art rather than merely a technical skill as proofreading can be. A copy editor must be a guru, able to master both the language and the tone of each manuscript. To do so requires an excellent command of English. Even then the whole task isn’t a walk in the park, as adherence to all the regulations including custom style guides can be engaging and tiring in equal proportions.
There are several copy editing tests today meant to usher in a new crop of copy editors, but the prevalence of these should not be mistaken to mean that this field is not a selective skill. Copy editing isn’t for the faint of heart, but for those with an expert eye for what makes good writing, a passion for language, and a knack for collaborative creativity that can be used to make book manuscripts truly sing.
