Peeling the Editorial Onion
Your first draft is finished. You spent hours or possibly months crafting it. All you need is a proofreader, and it’s ready to go live.
Right?
Well… maybe. It depends on your expectation for the piece. If it’s only going to land on your Facebook page and you’ll be happy to get a few 😊’s and 😉’s, then you’re all set.
However. If you want your piece to connect with your readers, to drive leads and conversions, or to be published by a third party, then you need to consider hiring an editor.
The reasons for editorial layering
A Google search of “different kinds of editing” yields a first-page result with titles that claim there are between three and nine different kinds of editing.
This difference is due to some editorial services focusing on one kind of editing over another, and other services blending multiple kinds of editing into a single price-point.
If you look at my rates page, for example, you can see that I don’t list “fact checking.” I’ve chosen not to because I would price it at about the same rate as content editing. If I’m asked to do a job that will require a lot of fact checking, I’ll discuss it with the client and include it in my quote – but I don’t want to clutter up my rates page by listing all of editing’s gradations.
“So why can’t fact checking and content editing and proofreading all happen at the same time?” I’ve been asked more than once.
The answer has two parts.
Part 1: Professionals expect to be paid for their effort
The TL; DR version of this section is that some editing is harder than others, and takes more knowledge, skill, and time. Like any other profession, editors expect to be compensated for those things.
If you hire someone as a proofreader but your piece needs to be content edited, then you aren’t compensating that professional appropriately.
An experienced editor can proofread something like 10-11 pages an hour, and they can work for several hours. The work of a proofreader mostly involves comparing what they see on the page to a finite set of rules they have long ago memorized.
Something like content editing, on the other hand, might be done at a pace of 6 pages an hour. The editor will consider grammar, but their primary job is to help the piece flow by easing through transitions, ensuring consistency of style and details, ensuring that the language isn’t redundant or repetitive, etc.
To do this well, a content editor has to consider the voice and style of the author, as well as the expectations for the genre. They can’t simply sit down and start fixing things – rather, everything they touch has to be considered against a set of stylistic rules that is different for every publication and author, and may even change chapter by chapter and section by section.
That extra time and effort means it costs more.
Part 2: We grow brain-blind to things.
Repeat a word often enough, and it begins to lose meaning. This phenomenon is known as “semantic satiation.”
In the same way that we can become satiated to a word’s meaning – or can become “noseblind to things” – we can become oblivious to the problems in our own writing. Explanations we believe to be plain can in fact be confusing. Drama we hope to create can have its tension spoiled in earlier sections. The conclusion we meant to bring our readers to with a subtle “Ta-da” can read with too much fanfare and be a near total repetition of an earlier passage we forgot we pasted from.
These are problems common in the writings of intelligent people.
And they’re all problems that can be fixed with the right kind of editing.
If a content editor gets his hands on a piece, then you can count on repetitions being removed, transitional phrases being added, and arguments being fleshed out so that conclusions follow logically.
Fixing those things, however, means rearranging, adding to, and subtracting from the text. The intention isn’t to change what the author has said, but to say it more clearly.
But that level of interaction with the material can introduce problems that the copy editor is oblivious to, just as writing creates problems the writer is oblivious to.
Which means that, after a piece has been content edited, it still needs to be proofread! The more eyes you can get to look at your piece, the better it will be.
My editorial gradations
For the kind of work that I do, and the kinds of jobs that most often come to me, I find that breaking the editorial process into four categories works best.
Proofreading is the last line of defense against errors before a manuscript goes live. It looks at spelling and grammar in both the text and captions and videos. It also looks at typesetting (margins, line and page breaks, etc.) and other elements of style that need happen at the end of the writing and editing processes. Proofreaders have to be meticulous, sharp, and grounded in the material.
Basic copy/line editing, unlike proofreading, isn’t trying to eradicate every last mistake. Rather, during copy editing the document is still a living, changing thing. Basic copy editing looks at issues such as style, verb tense and agreement, word choice and semantics, and other issues of grammar. Some rewriting happens, and light organizational and formatting issues are addressed before it goes to the proofreading stage.
Heavy/substantive/content editing looks at many of the same issues as basic copy editing, but involves more rewriting of the original text. In addition to addressing issues of tone and style, it also attempts to reinforce the themes and foci within the piece. Sentences and paragraphs might be rearranged and rewritten to improve the flow without changing the meaning. Transitions between chapters, paragraphs, and thoughts might be added. The work is checked for consistency in style, descriptions, and tone.
Developmental and structural edits look at big-picture issues such as plot holes, characterizations, and transitions between large ideas such as chapters and sections. Material is judged for its ability to reach your target audience, and sections may be cut or rewritten to do so. Some copy editing happens during this stage, but that’s because editors tend to be perfectionists. A developmental editor’s job isn’t to rewrite your project or even fix small errors. It’s to give you ideas on how the might be rewritten to better fit within the paradigm of its genre.
Other editorial gradations
Other kinds of editing I don’t list on my Services and Rates page, even though I still do them. Like fact-checking a blog post, I might include them in my quote. Or, I might not see enough of the work come my way to make it worth cluttering up my Rates page.
Stylistic editing is similar to basic copy editing, but is more concerned with the flow from sentence to sentence. If you’ve written a technical manual, you probably aren’t concerned about stylistic editing. However, if you want your manuscript to have creative appeal, then you might ask a copy editor to focus less on the mechanical elements of writing, and more on the style. A serious author might hire two different copy editors to do these different jobs, to ensure they’re done well.
Fact checking is done, to some degree, by developmental and copy editors. Longer works, magazines, and podcasts that want to be taken seriously all benefit from fact checking. When I edit material that is bound for the internet, I always fact check while content editing. There are usually just a few links which don’t take much time and which I’ve included in my budget. Times happen, however, when even small articles that seem simple benefit from a fact checker. I was once asked to proofread some copywriting about a windshield wiper, for example. After getting the article, I saw that it read as though the person had never driven a car. Even their simplest details of frost and fog had to be fact checked. After a discussion with the publisher, we agreed that they would hire me as a copy editor, and we managed to work the piece into a great draft.
Formatting is often taken on by the copy editor and proofreader. However, if there’s a lot of typesetting or formatting issues, at some point proofreaders will start to point them out without making the changes. Too many of these stylistic needs will distract from the proofreader’s ability to read closely. Books that include lots images or other stylistic additions could benefit from a formatting editor.
Mechanical editing is again, to some degree, done by copy editors and proofreaders. Works that need to meet a particular manual’s style – the AP or Chicago Manual, for example – could benefit from having someone look at those particular points. When I’m asked to proofread material that I know must meet a specific style guide, I include that in my quote. I read the material once for proofreading, and then a second time to check the formatting issues. Whether or not your work needs the particular focus of this level of editing depends on the kind of work it is and where you hope to see it published.
Indexing is usually only done for textbooks, children’s non-fiction books, or fantasy and sci-fi novels that involve so much world building that the reader might need a reference. Tolkien’s works, for example, often include an index of characters and places.
