Proofreading

You may say that you had beta readers and didn’t need a copy edit, just a proofread. To be clear, beta readers should be reading for story holes, character inconsistencies, big picture problems in the plot or situations. A copy editor considers word choice, sentence construction for dialects, tone, pacing, and following grammar rules to improve readability.

I don’t generally proofread projects I’ve copy edited. The reason is “fresh eyes.” A proofreader is a final check on all the previous steps getting your manuscript ready to publish. Editors are only human, and after hours and days of working and reworking on a manuscript, they can miss a host of “small” errors:

• transposed letters (“teh” not “the”)
• missing open or close quotations
• missing periods or commas
• DOuble capitals
• soft returns that mess up a line break when full justification is applied
• hard returns that break a line at the wrong width
• widows/orphans, a single word or line dangling at the top of a page
• incorrect homophones that tired, familiar eyes just passed over