“Can you look this over?”

“Yes, certainly! What kind of edit do you want?”

As editing professionals, we know the distinctions between various stages of developing and revising a product, but our clients don’t necessarily know. And we don’t need them to! We are here to make the pain points of producing text less painful. Our first step is figuring out what you want and need.

If we aren’t asked to “look something over,” we’re probably asked to “proofread.” But the person asking probably doesn’t mean the very technical and design-check-oriented “quality assurance” review that “proofreading” means to publishing pros. Proofreading might be the only thing that a new client knows to ask for. Or they may mean that they only want very light changes to avoid embarrassing errors. That’s OK, we can figure out what is wanted with a bit of a chat. 

Top-most: How much more work do you want?

One of the most important questions is: How much more effort do you want to put into this? There’s no point in having an editor suggest rearranging content, writing new sections, or replacing images when the team doesn’t have the energy (or time or budget!) to work on it anymore.

If the answer is “we want this to be the best it can be,” then we can talk about starting with the left column of the chart below. But if everyone just needs to get this off their “to do” list, then we’ll restrict suggestions more toward the right side of the chart.

Second: How much has already been done?

If no one else has ever reviewed the material, it’s probably not productive to suggest changes for consistency or style when rewriting or reorganizing will be the biggest help. The converse is also true: if all layers of approvals have been finalized, there’s little point suggesting that the material be reworked.

Commenting on the quality of decorating (proofreading) before the cake is iced doesn’t work. And suggesting a change in flavour (style) or a new layer (structure) when the cake is already decorated (laid out) is practically impossible.

Editing in stages

In ideal production, each product (e.g., book, report, presentation, packaging) goes through at least 4 stages of content revision. In practice, several stages may be combined, skipped, or repeated as necessary. Stages may also go by other names used in the related industry (like quality control instead of proofreading).

There are only two absolutes in the production process: 

1. True proofreading happens only on the final test run of the product, and 
2. Big content changes are best done first and with the audience’s needs leading decisions.

You can find a detailed description of the stages from several professional editing associations around the world. Here’s a rough breakdown of the kinds of changes that will be suggested at each stage of development:

	Development/ Structural Editing	Style/ Line Editing	Copyediting	Proofreading/ QA
Plain language (structures)	✅
Audience needs (content & structures)	✅
Internal detail consistency	✅		✅	✅
Suggesting & selecting visuals	✅
Legal concerns (permissions, libel, etc.)	✅	✅	✅	✅
Consistency in ideas & data	✅		✅
Point of view	advice given	✅	✅
Plain language (wording)		✅	✅
Reading level adjustment	advice given	✅
Audience needs (wording)		✅	✅
Logic, sense, & flow	✅	✅	✅
Timeline & calendar	✅		✅
Readability	✅	✅	✅
Tense		✅	✅
Accessibility compliance	✅	✅	✅	✅
Spelling and grammar		✅	✅	✅
Consistency in language			✅
Layout & design checks				✅
Quality & placement of visuals				✅
Sample Pace	500 wph	12500 wph	1250 wph	2250 wph

Note: advice given = changes are drafted at other stages but not in this case; wph = words per hour; cost very much depends on the individual product and editor (and inflation), and that can be estimated by your editor; here are more sample costs broken down by niche and an instant estimator

Ready for editing?

Get in touch with The Quad and one of us will walk you through the options and prepare an estimate. Our experience spans the full range of products, from novels to packaging, and everything in between. We welcome your questions!

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Torte image by PixelPerfectMom from Pixabay