Wednesday, August 15, 2018

All You Need To Know About Book Copyediting

By Susan Edwards


Before literary works can be released to the general public, they have to go through a rigorous scrutiny process. Book copyediting is not as simple as it sounds. It requires a specific set of skills and is quite different from proofreading. The professional will look at grammar, spellings, syntax, and punctuation. They are known as publishing partners by people in the business.

Apart from grammar, spelling, and syntax, the step also involves a check for technicalities and possible story inconsistencies. There is a check for possible legal liability. For the non-fiction works, this step also ensures all facts in the work are correct and relevant. In traditional publishing, experts make sure that the work adheres to the current publishing standards. There is a need for diligent attention to detail and other special skills at this stage.

Before ever getting to this stage, the manuscript has to go through some prerequisite steps. These steps are meant to approve of the manuscript and story in general. This is like the first nod of approval. After passing this step, it is more probable than not that the work will go to print. It starts with a sort of general critique. Further down the line, there is a line by line critique. Lines may be moved and scenes amended.

By now, one may already guess that this work is highly technical. It probably best to go with a professional. If one is going through the traditional publishing process, the publishing house will have these things done. Otherwise, one may need to find a professional by their own means. A professional will not have typo blindness. This is the inability to see own mistakes. This is attributed to the fact that the brain already knows what was meant to be relayed and therefore relays the information. This causes a blind spot to the errors. Not to mention, the peace of mind one will have having had professional eyes on the manuscript.

However, for one reason or other one is able to get a professional there are tips to ensure DIY is still good enough. First of all, take a little break from the manuscript once it is complete. Take a vacation or go do things that went ignored when the story had taken over. Once this break is over, the typo blindness will be very close to non-existent. One will be able to easier notice own errors.

Choose vivid action verbs in place of passive sentences. Reduce adjectives and adverbs by using descriptive language. If there is doubt about the meaning of a particular word, look it up and confirm.

Shorten long sentences. Elongate short sentences that seem idle or just remove them completely. Keep off the italics and exclamation marks. This is not a text by a teenage girl. It is professionally prepared literature. It should read like it.

Take time on this process. It makes or break. Read the manuscript from beginning to end after the corrections are affected. Another trick to finding misspellings and errors is to read each page backward. For instance start from the bottom this way the brain does not autofill and will, therefore, see exactly what is on the page. Again family and friends can be used at this stage too.




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