An Overview: Accomplished Art of Copyediting and Proofreading

Are you going through a dilemma of how well your written content will be received by your readers?

Want to be self-assured that everything that is written is without any errors and readers will easily do the sense-making of the content which you wanted to convey through your writing?

In the ocean of content written regularly, you want to outshine others and unfurl your writing mastery and get noticed?

In that case, you should make sure that you make your writing whether for article/book is smooth and silky so that readability becomes a fulfilling and pleasant experience.

To happen so, you must get your content for copyediting and proofreading to someone who knows the job well professionally and knows to do it with a modern touch.

Why one should hire a copyeditor for their written content?

People write their content which may contain many grammatical, structural, improper use of words, which changes the whole sense-making.

Wrong punctuation in the right place can do blunders.

All those small yet not insignificant mistakes, slipups can damage the author’s reputation and lose readers too.

Once the book is published and if it contains such mistakes, it will add a huge cost to rectify and republish.

Most people think that editing is all about correcting few writing errors, adding a punctuation mark here and there. But it’s not as simple as it sounds.

It’s a complete course and comprises many elements and essentials to give the perfect great read experience and enhances readability.

What is Copyediting?

Copy editing is a process in which one revises the written content and ensures that the content contains correct sentence structure, grammar semantics, style proper use of words that contextually makes better sense-making.

Through copy editing, it is also ensured that the idea or the message the writer wishes to convey to his/her audience is put up clearly and it is easy to understand.

In this process, it is taken care that the factual data in the text is accurate and free of other issues too such as legal issues of copyright, etc.

In short, Copy editing is

1. Revising a written draft.
2. Correcting sentence structure, grammar semantics, style.
3. Sense-making of sentences.
4. Providing clarity.
5. Smooth transitions of ideas and paragraphs.
6. Set the tone as per the subject.
7. Keep the consistency.

What is Proofreading?

Proofreading is the final stage, which comes after copyediting. In this process, the content/text is thoroughly checked to remove all kinds of mistakes, including spelling, sentence structure, consistency, capitalization, formatting, and references, etc. The final draft is prepared once the proofreading is done. It is just like going through the second lens after copyediting is done.

In short, proofreading is

1. Proofreading focuses on external errors, such as spelling mistakes, capitalization, etc.
2. To double-check for errors.
3. To determine if it makes sense.
4. To delete repeated words.
5. To write omitted words.
6. To correct formatting errors, punctuation or capitalization errors.
7. To correct incorrect paragraph, indentions or spacing between lines and words.
8. To remove the inconsistency.
9. To provide the overall finesse and quality to the content.

Difference Between Copyediting Versus Proofreading.

From the above writings, one might think that both copyediting and proofreading are mostly one or the same.

No! They are not the same, although they both take care of mistakes related to ready-to-publish written texts, but editing the first copy and proofreading and finalize the final draft are two sets of tasks.

However, both are necessary for making the written content super-quality and an extra shine to the final content.

A copyeditor usually has to rewrite, reorganize, put new words and even restructure the whole content without changing the theme/plot of the writing. It’s like shadow work, perfecting the original piece of writing. At this stage, formatting, slipups, and other marginal issues are not focused on.

Whereas in proofreading the revised draft is re-revised and gets through the micro-scoping lens of word by word, checking, fonts, gaps, style matching, paragraphing, index, references and every comma, full stop and all possible error which exists in writing.

Summary- The Ultimate Craft of getting finished written content is Copyediting and proofreading.