Writers! Do You Know What Kind of Edit You Need?

Darcy Nybo, a fellow colleague, did me the favor of laying out the different edits you can ask for and receive on your writing project.

Darcy Nybo

She knows her stuff and editing is definitely not my forte. So thank you Darcy for sharing your wealth of information. It’s very much appreciated. Here’s a short bio…

Darcy is a multiple award-winning author, a sought after editor, team book publisher, writing coach and writing instructor, and a well-known freelance writer. Darcy has the knowledge and a sense of humour that magnify her natural ability as an instructor. She runs two word-related companies: alwayswrite.ca and artisticwarrior.com. Check out her sites and tell her I sent you.

Learning the lingo and differences between the edits can mean getting what you want and need versus unnecessary work done and monies spent. Remember, that when you read your own stuff, often your brain will do the corrections because it knows what’s supposed to be there. Get another set of eyes on your work. It can really mean the difference between okay, good, and great.

FIRST EDIT is a developmental edit.

A developmental edit looks at the big picture and focuses on organization and structure more than word choice, punctuation, and grammar.

EVALUATION EDIT

Looks at structure, flow and overall quality. Once the evaluation edit is complete, it is sent back with suggestions on where to plump up the story and where to trim it.

The evaluation edit also looks at structure, and is more of a big picture edit.

CONTENT EDIT

The content edit is the last one before diving deep into the manuscript. It looks at the structure of your book, with top of mind being “Was the story complete and will the reader be satisfied.”

This is where things like flow are tightened up to ensure all the questions posed are answered, all the challenges met, etc. Bottom line for a content edit is “Will the reader be satisfied with the story”

LINE EDIT

A line edit is a line by line review of the book. This is when the typos and grammar etc. are looked at and corrected fully.

COPY EDIT

Just as it sounds, the copy edit searches for typos, grammar and punctuation.

Studies show that most people only find 60% of these errors, especially if you’ve been staring at the manuscript for days on end.

The average professional copy editor will only catch 85% of the errors. That’s why you need a proofreader.

PROOFREADING

This is done AFTER the book is in the layout phase. The proofreader will look for all the things the copyeditor did, and they also look at layout for errors with pagination, heading consistency, orphans and widows (single words at the top or bottom of pages).

A proofreader does not consider content, they look for errors.