Editing

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“Writing without revising

is the literary equivalent of waltzing gaily out of the house

in your underwear.”

― Patricia Fuller



Editing is a significant and essential necessity of any book project. It's required by publishers and it will figure in readers' impression of you: either you're professional and authoritative or not. The last thing you want is for your readers to be distracted by:

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• typos and poor grammar

• malapropisms, poorly chosen and inappropriately used words

• confusing sentences and paragraphs

• digressive and disorganized information and content

• poorly defined and extraneous characters

• multiple voices and writing styles

• verbosity and lack of clarity

• redundancy and enigmatic composition



In the book-writing process, there are three levels of editing:



• Edit: a high-level review for content flow and story arc, organization, plot development (if required), character development, is the book's title effectively engaging, are the chapter titles and sub-titles appropriately descriptive, is there material to be cut or added, and does the book stay focused on its intended target audience.

• Copyedit: deep-level edit to catch every little typo, review of all grammar usage, sentence and paragraph constructure, organization from top to bottom, content and character development, all facts are correct and correctly stated and used, quotes and alliterations are correctly stated, voice is consistent throughout, no mixed styles, proper names and dates correct and consistent, and settings are accurately depicted.

• Final Proof: a final read-through of the book once the interior has been laid out in order to catch any widows, orphans, consistent font sizes and usage, missing content and repeated content, footnotes appearing on the correct pages, consistent runners and headers, front and back matter correct, barcode and ISBN appear where required, text alignments correct, captions appear with correct graphics, layout and style standards adhered to assiduously, if color is used that it's consistent throughout the book, and pages numbered accordingly and consistently.