About Light Copyediting
A light copyedit is for manuscripts that have been previously edited and are only in need of a final grammar check or for authors on a particularly tight budget. A medium edit is a better fit for most books, but if you can’t afford a medium copyedit, a light edit will at least ensure that your book is free from errors.
Light copyedits focus only on grammar issues and involve checking and correcting indisputable issues with the following:
- Abbreviations, acronyms, and special characters
- Capitalization
- Italics and bold type (appropriateness and consistency)
- Numbers within the text
- Numbering and alphabetization of footnotes, table of contents, chapters, etc.
- Punctuation
- References, footnotes, and other documentation
- Spelling and hyphenation
- Style sheet (provided upon request)
- Syntax and usage
- Tables, charts, graphs, illustrations, and associated captions
- Terms (flag words that may need to be defined for readers)
- Typecoding (on request)
- Word usage and syntax
The following issues may be flagged with a comment but not corrected:
- Factual inconsistencies and continuity errors
- Permissions (flag potentially copyrighted material)
- POV
- Tense
- Unclear phrasing
- Voice
- Wordiness*
*A light copyedit ignores wordiness within individual sentences that is not likely to cause confusion for readers. Larger sections of wordiness or sentences that are unclear will be flagged.
Light Copyedit Rates
Light copyedits include two readings* for a relatively clean manuscript or one for rough manuscripts. By rough manuscripts I mean if the book really needed a heavier edit or hasn’t been carefully read over and is missing a notable amount of the basic punctuation, in which case one reading can take as long or longer than two readings of a manuscript that is ready for a light copyedit.
Rush edits are usually only available for pieces up to 20K and depend on my availability. If I am available, turn around time for a rush light edit is one to five days, depending on the length of the piece.
*Two readings means that I will read the manuscript twice before returning it to you. The bulk of the edits will be made during the first round, and the second round will double check those edits and look for anything missed in the first read through.
If you want the manuscript edited, returned to you for revisions, then edited again, that would be done as two separate edits. I do offer a 25 percent discount on additional services for the same book as well as spot-checking.
Please see scheduling an edit for more information. If you have any questions or would like to schedule a proofread edit, don’t hesitate to contact me.