You’ve revisited and revised your book, and you’re happy with plot, characters, and prose. You’re ready for a copyedit—but what does that really mean?
Copyediting is one of the most important and misunderstood aspects of the editorial process. Your copyeditor scours your manuscript for small errors that can make a big difference in your book’s quality. Let’s take a look at some of the things your editor is looking for during a copyedit.
For a quick review of each stage of editing, take a look at 4 Types of Editing for Fiction Writing (and Why You Want Them).
The basics: What is copyediting? Is it the same as proofreading?
Just to get it out of the way: Copyediting is not the same as proofreading. This is a common misconception among those who are unfamiliar with the different editorial stages. These two passes may find similar errors, like misplaced commas and funny spellings. But the proofreader is the last-stage quality-checker. They look for the small mistakes that may have slipped through during the copyediting pass. Depending on your manuscript, a proofreader has other duties, too, but we won’t go into that here.
Your copyeditor, however, does the heavy lifting on your manuscript. By analyzing the mechanical aspects of your writing and your style’s nitty-gritty details, they can help you correct and perfect your story’s syntax.
Copyediting focuses on spelling, punctuation, and grammar, but the job doesn’t end there.
Mechanics
In addition to simple typos, a copyeditor looks for things like:
- incorrect homonyms (like read and reed)
- comma splices
- sentence fragments
- incorrect punctuation, especially around dialogue and dialogue tags
- fact-checking
- logical fallacies and inconsistencies
Fact-checking
The copyediting stage might involve some simple fact-checking, too. For example, a savvy copyeditor’s eyes will narrow at the mention of a phone call in your gothic romance set in 1855, since the telephone wasn’t invented until 1876. People didn’t use it regularly until even later.
You may not think something so simple would be a big deal. But be aware—your readers may be great lovers of history and know very well that your character couldn’t make that phone call. A mistake like that could undermine your credibility as an accurate historical novelist.
A lot of nonfiction writers hire a dedicated fact-checker. The editor working at this stage focuses only on factual accuracy and isn’t thinking about punctuation or accurate dialogue tags. However, most fiction doesn’t need a specific fact-checking pass. Though you should research topics to the best of your ability beforehand, a good copyeditor can catch the stuff you might have missed.
Consistency
The copyediting stage also covers consistency. Say your main character’s name is Katherine. However, five pages later, your copyeditor comes across a scene where she is called Catherine and yet another where she is Kathryn. Unless your MC is trying to obscure her identity (and doing a lousy job of it), these are simple spelling inconsistencies.
Your copyeditor is on the lookout for contradictions just like this. At this point, your editor will likely query you to find out what’s correct and record the accurate spelling in a style sheet.
What is a style sheet? Do I need one?
A style sheet is a document recording the specifics of your manuscript. Many freelance editors provide you with a style sheet as part of their copyediting service.
When a copyeditor comes across inconsistencies of proper noun spellings or punctuation preferences (Oxford comma, anyone?), it throws up a red flag. They will ask what you want and record it in the style sheet. Later, when your editor comes across the same situation, they won’t need to ask you again. Style sheets help keep your preferences close at hand.
Most novels follow The Chicago Manual of Style for specific conventions, and for good reason. Even fantasy and sci-fi writing should have some grounding in reality. Keeping conventions similar to those used in the real world gives more credibility to your fictional creation.
But if you’re self-publishing, you are free to deviate when and where you wish. Just make sure you let your editor know what you want beforehand. It’ll save them time, which ultimately saves you money.
I’m self-publishing: When am I ready for copyediting?
Copyediting comes in toward the end of the editorial process. A copyeditor shouldn’t see your manuscript until later drafts, preferably no sooner than the third pass. Your book should go through the developmental and line editing stages first, at the very least.
Whether you choose to do these two stages yourself or hire a professional is up to you. But make sure your book’s content is exactly the way you want it before sending it to an editor. It is pointless to pay for work on a chapter if you just end up rewriting the whole thing later. It wastes both time and money in the long run.
Your copyedit should come before typesetting. Take care of all the mechanical details before you move on to the visual layout. Major issues are much harder and far more costly to fix after your book is typeset.
The verdict on copyediting
Copyediting is one of the most essential stages in the editorial process. Except in rare circumstances, a book that hasn’t been copyedited is confusing and hard to read. Most of the unedited books I’ve read are riddled with sentence structure flaws, incorrect punctuation, and false facts. Errors like these send most readers away, and they won’t be back for your next story.
If you want your book to meet the standard of traditional publishing, you’ll need a copyeditor. As with a line edit, this fresh set of eyes can do wonders for your book.
Some editors do both line editing and copyediting together since both passes work at the sentence level. But make sure you are specific about what you want. Not all copyeditors offer a line editing service, combined or otherwise. On the other hand, you may not want someone working on your novel’s lyrical style; you just want the mechanical clean-up. Both options are fine, as long as you and your editor are on the same page from the outset.
Until next time,
Jenna
Jenna Justice is a fiction editor and proofreader for independent authors. She specializes in speculative genres, including fantasy, science fiction, dystopian, utopian, the paranormal, and urban fantasy for adult, middle-grade, and young adult readers. She is a proud member of ACES: The Society for Editing.
Visit Jenna’s website at Justice Serves Proofreading, and say hi on Twitter at @justice_proofs.