Editorial Services Guide
By The Bay Area Editors' Forum

Definition: Copyediting

At all levels of copyediting—light, medium, and heavy—the copyeditor corrects errors, queries the author about conflicting statements, requests advice when the means of resolving a problem is unclear, and prepares a style sheet. The copyeditor may also incorporate the author's replies to queries; this work is known as cleanup editing. Before work begins, freelance editors should determine if the copyediting fee will cover cleanup editing or if cleanup editing will be performed for an additional fee.

Light Copyediting (baseline editing)

• Correcting faulty spelling, grammar, and punctuation.
• Correcting incorrect usage (such as can for may).
• Checking specific cross-references (for example, "As Table 14-6 shows...").
• Ensuring consistency in spelling, hyphenation, numerals, fonts, and capitalization.
• Checking for proper sequencing (such as alphabetical order) in lists and other displayed material.
• Recording the first references to figures, tables, and other display elements.

A light copyedit does not involve interventions such as smoothing transitions or changing heads or text to ensure parallel structure. The editor checks content only to detect spots where copy is missing. A light copyedit may include typemarking.

• Performing all tasks for light copyediting.
• Changing text and headings to achieve parallel structure.
• Flagging inappropriate figures of speech.
• Ensuring that key terms are handled consistently and that vocabulary lists and the index contain all the terms that meet criteria specified by the publisher.
• Ensuring that previews, summaries, and end-of-chapter questions reflect content.
• Tracking the continuity of plot, setting, and character traits, and querying the discrepancies, in fiction manuscripts.
• Enforcing consistent style and tone in a multi-author manuscript.
• Changing passive voice to active voice, if requested.
• Flagging ambiguous or incorrect statements.
• Typemarking the manuscript.

• Performing all tasks for medium copyediting.
• Eliminating wordiness, triteness, and inappropriate jargon.
• Smoothing transitions and moving sentences to improve readability.
• Assigning new levels to heads to achieve logical structure.
• Suggesting—and sometimes implementing—additions and deletions, noting them at the sentence and paragraph level.

The key differences between heavy and medium copyedits are the levels of judgment and rewriting involved. In a heavy copyedit, the editor improves the flow of text rather than simply ensuring correct usage and grammar; may suggest recasts rather than simply flagging problems; and may enforce a uniform level, tone, and focus as specified by the publisher or developmental editor.

Select a copyeditor.