Polish Your Book: What Is Copyediting and Why It’s Key
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Copyediting? Grammar checking? Polishing? Proofreading?
Like other editorial terms, this type of edit goes by many names, but what is copyediting? Far from being a simple typo check, copyediting is a close and thorough review of a manuscript that delves into the mechanics of language to create clarity, ensure consistency, and give the author confidence in their work. Though it is commonly considered to be synonymous with proofreading, copyediting and proofreading are two distinct steps of the editorial process with different functions. In this article, we’ll discuss what a copyedit is and the many ways that it can benefit an author that are often overlooked.
What is copyediting?
In the editorial process, copyediting should be considered the last step before formatting and proofreading. Copyediting is the last polish on a manuscript, so all story-level and structural revisions should be complete before starting on this kind of edit. The purpose of a copyedit is to comb through a manuscript with a close eye on sentence structure, word choice, grammar, clarity, and flow.
Here are a few things that your copyeditor might do:
Make corrections to avoid awkward or unclear phrasing
Eliminate repetition (such as a character performing the same action more than once in a scene) and word echoes (the same word appearing multiple times close together)
Align the text with industry standards for grammar, punctuation, and spelling to ensure a smooth reading experience
Ensure character details remain consistent throughout the story
Make sure dialogue is punctuated correctly
What else can a copyedit do for you?
The benefits I’ve listed above may be familiar to you, but a high-quality copyedit goes beyond the nuts and bolts of language to support the realism of the story on a sentence level. I’ll touch on just a few here.
Copyediting gives you a master style sheet for your manuscript
Particularly for fantasy and sci-fi manuscripts, a copyeditor will create a style sheet that includes all of the unique names, places, and terms in the book. This style sheet ensures that all of these words are consistently spelled throughout the manuscript, and it also allows the author to see their book on a word level and make decisions that help build the world of the story.
For example, in one sci-fi manuscript I worked on for a client, I discovered that she had used five different terms to refer to the same technology, some with hyphens and some without. To make this technology feel consistent in the world, she chose one term from the list and eliminated the rest.
A style sheet can also incorporate the author’s personal preferences when it comes to grammar, spelling, and other conventions. In fiction, writers should feel free to break the rules at will, but for an enjoyable read, there should be a reason—and a pattern— for how and when those rules will be broken. For instance, I worked with a manuscript where the author wanted to craft a unique voice and perspective for their story, choosing to render words like “anyone” as “any1.” In a story like this, the copyeditor would ensure that the word “anyone” did not appear in the text.
The same style sheet can also extend to describe story details that the author wants to remain consistent throughout, such as certain words that are only used to describe certain characters or even speech patterns that are distinctive to a character.
Copyediting enhances language
Word choice, or diction, is another area that a copyeditor will pay attention to while working. While a copyedit does not get as deep into enhancing language as a line edit does, it does include changing or highlighting words that could be changed to make tonal shifts, improve pacing, and otherwise support the story. In some instances, an editor may make changes to words that don’t match a character’s age or personality, or they may make tweaks in places where words or expressions are used that are not historically accurate to a time period.
Similarly, an editor might also change or flag words that don’t ring true to the world of the story. As an example, in a copyedit I finished recently, I brought the word “click” to the author’s attention when it was used in the context of accessing digital documents. “Click” is a word that comes from the sound that a computer mouse makes, but even now, many people aren’t “clicking” anymore but “tapping” with their technology. In that sci-fi story, most characters interacted with the world with a digital overlay via optic implants, so “click” felt outdated and inaccurate to what the characters were doing.
Copyediting straightens out the nitty-gritty details
Sometimes I like to describe a copyedit as the editor looking for all of the last details that the author just can’t see anymore. When you’ve spent so long in the depths of your story, it can be difficult to get enough perspective to catch continuity errors, duplicated words, copy/paste or find/replace snafus, character name changes, and other minutiae. A copyeditor can also check for timeline consistency, such as making sure a character doesn’t go to school for ten days in a row or checking that there’s only one Wednesday in the week. In another manuscript I worked on, I reviewed time stamps in the manuscript to ensure they were realistically reflecting the pace of the action of the plot.
The power of copyediting
A beautifully copyedited manuscript means that your readers won’t be jarred out of the reading experience by typos or other errors, and you can be confident that your work has a professional polish that will make it stand out. Copyeditors like us do our best to elevate an author’s unique voice while creating an enjoyable reading experience. If you’re looking for a final pass on your manuscript to make sure that the text is sharp and supporting your vision for the story, a copyedit might be the just the thing you need.
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