A lot of people think proofreading and copy editing (also know as sub-editing) are very similar or even the exact same thing. Both involve close and cautious reading of a document, but the tasks are different. If you are self publishing your work, it is essential to know the differences and similarities between proofreading and copy editing.
Copy Editing
Consider this the heavy lifting of editing. It typically has nothing to do with the actual story structure, manuscript critique, or developmental edit. Copy edit comes after content edit. By the time you reach the copy editing phase, the story is pretty much pegged down and you are satisfied with the what has developed in the content.
Now you need a professional to help you to bring the story to the next level. Having said that, copy editor is not a glorified spell checker. They address stuffs like fact checking, grammar, usage, punctuation, and very importantly consistency.
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Process of revising written material (“copy”) to improve readability and fitness, as well as ensuring that text is free of grammatical and factual errors.
As your story develops, you may not realize the character changes over chapters. It may happen to the setting like buildings, equipment, hair styles, etc. Professional copy editor catches those errors and make the correction in order to maintain consistency in the story.
Most of the time, copy editor uses a style guide and adhering to it to make sure everything fits within the realm of rules. An example would be “email” and “e-mail”. The same word should appear and used in the all the pages but not both.
The other things copy editors do are phrasing and transitions. They look out for clunky or awkward sentence and reword or rewrite them to present a strong and smooth prose, and ensuring the story.
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Proofreading
Proofreading is the realm of editing that is not well known to people, although it is an incredibly important process. This process takes place at the very end, especially after the developmental, copy editing, and formatting. In comparison to copy editing, proofreading does have a slightly lower cost associated with it. But it is not an replacement to copy editing.
Final stage of the writing process when the paper is evaluated for mechanical correctness, such as grammar, punctuation, spelling, omitted words, repeated words, spacing and format, and typographical errors
While most proofreaders work with PDF or document file, some prefer proof copy which is the version completely laid out for print. If a proofreader receives a manuscript which has too many errors, it may be send back to the copy editor. In essence, it is not the proofreader’s job to fix the colons, semi-colons, punctuations, grammar errors, etc. Consider proofreading as quality assurance as the proofreader is the last professional to make sure what is actually going out to readers.
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