Editing Styles That Every Writer Should Know!

If you want to be a professional writer and publish a book, you will need a particular set of skills. Foremost amongst these skills is the ability to edit your work in the most effective and efficient way possible. This is because the better you edit your work, the better the outcome will be.

So whether you are writing a short story, an article, or an entire book you will need to learn how to edit your writing as effectively as possible.

Here are editing styles that every writer should know:

Line Editing

The main difference between line editing to other editing styles is the fact that it addresses structural issues. While other editing forms conduct the editing process on a sentence-by-sentence basis, line editing takes the overall paragraph and strives to make it clearer and more functional.

Line editing regulates issues such as excessive use of adjectives, sentence length, and loose ends. The main objective in line editing is to make sure that your overall story flow is effective and efficient. It is also used to regulate how you use language to communicate your story to your readers.

Developmental editing

Developmental editing is a lot more extensive compared to other editing styles. This is because developmental editing makes you look at the bigger picture. It’s a structural analysis of your overall story.

And if you have a book editor do a developmental edit of your work, you will most likely get a highly detailed account of your story. It can be quite expensive though because developmental editing usually involves the entire structure of your manuscript. And these services usually include the deleting, rearranging, adding, and rewording of your work, should the editor see fit.

Proofreading

Proofreading is by far one of the simpler editing forms and is relatively cheap. It usually entails having someone who has never seen your work, go over it and look for errors that you may have overlooked.

It is less extensive than other editing styles, but it is still a very important step when preparing your work, before the final printout. The errors proofreaders look for are usually grammar, spelling, punctuation, and formatting.

This type of editing is usually done in the later phases of the book editing process. It is technically the final check before your book is given the green light to be printed.

Copyediting

Copyediting is the editing style that is used before the more comprehensive proofreading style. Where proofreading is a paragraph-based edit, copyediting is a sentence-level edit. Although copyediting is not as comprehensive as proofreading it is still very much a necessity.

Throughout the copyediting process, your manuscript will be checked for grammar, word usage, and inconsistencies.

Aside from that, the copy editor will also check for syntax errors. Punctuations will also be checked such as quotation marks, commas, and semicolons to name but a few.

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Editing Styles That Every Writer Should Know!

Here are editing styles that every writer should know:

Become a Self-Published Author in 3 Simple Steps

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