The Major Types of Editing
If your project has words in it, you need to hire an editor. The question is: what type of editing do you actually need?
ANSWER: IT DEPENDS.
When most people think of editing, they are usually thinking about proofreading - one final review of your writing to catch any outstanding typos before you email, print, send, or publish your project. In reality, there are many different types of editing that happen at different stages of the writing process.
The type of editing you need depends on 4 things:
Where you are in the writing process
What type of content you are writing
What type of editing has already been done to your writing
Your needs as a writer
It doesn’t matter if you are working on a book, a blog post, or marketing materials - working with a professional editor will significantly improve the quality of your final project. However, hiring a professional editor can be intimidating, especially when trying to understand what type of editing you need and how to find a good editor for your project.
Fortunately, deciding what type of editing you need doesn’t have to be so hard!
In this article, I’ll walk you through all the major types of editing, what is included in the edit, how they relate to one another, when you should use the edit, and what you can expect from your editor.
To help you determine what type of editing your writing needs, you should begin by asking yourself these questions (and answering honestly):
Is my project complete or are there more ideas or sections that I need to flesh out?
How long ago did I finish writing this?
What are the big ideas, themes, or main arguments?
Is this my first time writing this kind of project?
Have I done any self-editing yet?
What does my audience need to know?
How does my writing sound when I read it out loud?
Do I want ongoing editorial support or am I working under a one-time deadline?
By having answers to these questions, you can begin to identify which type of editing your writing needs or you are ready for. Thinking about these questions can also help you and your editor decide on a course of action to begin work on your writing.
Developmental Editing
(aka: content editing or substantive editing)
A developmental edit happens early in the creation process. If you have a rough-draft for a book or the outline for a digital course down on paper but you need help building out your ideas and bringing all of the elements together to create a cohesive narrative, a developmental edit can help.
During a developmental edit, your editor will focus on big-picture issues and provide you with detailed feedback on structure, idea refinement, flow, and overall quality. You should expect to receive some form of editorial report detailing your editors suggestions and comments, as well as annotations directly on your project.
Your editor will look critically at your work as a whole and help you organize your ideas, structure the content of your project, and transition smoothly between ideas. If you think about writing and editing like building a house, a developmental editor makes sure the foundation of your house has been laid out properly and all of the designs are in place to begin the rest of construction.
Editorial Assessment
(aka: manuscript critique or evaluation editing)
If your project isn’t isn't completely drafted out outlined yet, but you still want to get some feedback on the concept and what you have down on paper so far, you may want to get an editorial assessment.
During an editorial assessment, your editor won't do any writing or rewriting, but they will identify areas of your writing that aren’t working well and highlight the areas of your writing that are the best. Similar to a developmental edit, an editorial assessment is not as focused on the finer details of your writing, but the big picture issues.
An editorial assessment is a good tool to get some feedback and support on your writing early on in the creation process but you should not rely on the editorial assessment to perfect the structure and framework of your writing. Instead, use the editorial assessment as a litmus test to gauge help you determine your next steps in the writing process.
Line editing
(aka: stylistic editing)
As the name implies, a line edit is when your editor begins reviewing your project line by line. Prior to receiving a line edit, your project should have already undergone some sort of developmental edit to ensure the structure, flow, and transitions of your writing are good. During a line edit, your editor will assess your writing from a content, flow, and stylistic perspective.
Here are some specific things a line editor will be working on when they look at your writing:
Word choice
Sentence structure
Sentence and idea transitions
Implicit and explicit meaning
Clarity
Readability
Tightening ideas and construction to reduce wordiness (there is no need to use 15 words when 5 words will do)
General prose and style
During a line edit, your editor is focused on the reader’s experience and while some line editors will also do light copyediting to check for grammatical or spelling errors, this should not be expected. If you would like your editor to provide both of these services, be sure to make this clear when you are setting the scope of the project before your editor begins work.
Copyediting
Once you have a complete draft of your project with a solid structure and you’re ready to address the issues at the sentence level, it's time to hire a copyeditor. A copyeditor will comb through your project to correct spelling, punctuation, and grammar mistakes as well as improve clarity, coherency, consistency, and correctness.
In addition to checking your spelling, punctuation, and grammar, some copyeditors will also provide line editing services. Here at Ellen Edits, the Complete Copyedit package includes both copyediting and line editing.
If you want your editor to provide this kind of all-in-one service, be sure to speak with your editor about your desire as you are setting the scope of your project so your editor knows what types of edits to perform.
Here are some specific things a copyeditor will be working on when they look at your writing:
Punctuation
Capitalization
Spelling
Grammar
Repetition
Jargon
Identifying run-on sentences, fragments or clichés
Word choice
Light fact-checking
Consistent point of view (POV)
Consistent descriptions of characters, locations, or experiences
Correct dialogue tags
Your copyeditor will not only find and fix mistakes, they will also make sure your writing follows the appropriate style guide (Chicago Manual of Style or AP Stylebook) for the type of project you are creating. A thorough copyedit is often the difference between writing that is seen as professional, informative, and engaging and writing that is clearly amateur.
Proofreading
When most people think of editing, they usually think of proofreading. Proofreading is the final review of your project before you're ready to publish, print, email, or share what you’ve been working so hard to complete.
Proofreading is the last line of defense against errors and will check for the following issues:
Typos
Punctuation
Page numbering
Consistency in headings and fonts
Proper lacing of images and tables
Awkward or distracting line and page breaks
Because so much content gets published online these days, some people are skipping the proofreading process. This can be a big risk because just like in print, once you import your content on to your blog, design software, or digital publishing platform your words and formatting tend to shift around. Hiring an editor for a final proofread allows one final review of your project with a fine tooth comb before you are good to go.
Additional Editorial Services:
Fact checking:
If you have a lot of information in your writing or you are referencing external sources, a fact checker will confirm each of your claims, statistics, figures, or references to ensure there are no inaccuracies.
Indexing:
This type of editing is pretty much limited to academic writing or intense nonfiction projects that require an extensive index to manage all of your references.
Formatting:
Editing is all about the content and formatting is all about the look - formatting will make sure your typography, margins, special symbols, and other aesthetic elements are all taken care of.
So, what type of editing do you need?
Now that we have walked through the major phases of the editing process, you should have a better idea of what type of editing is appropriate for your project based on the completeness of your project and your needs as a writer.
No matter if you’ve done the brainstorming and idea farming, gotten feedback on organization and structure, or done some self-editing, you still need to hire a professional copyeditor and proofreader at the very least. Your editor will make sure your writing reflects all of the hard work you put into your writing and your audience can get the most value from your content without being distracted by dozens of typos and clunky sentence structure.
Whether you are an author or entrepreneur, outsourcing the editing process to a professional is one of the best investments you can make to ensure everything you publish is polished and professional!
