Do You Really Need Both?

Yes, You Need an Editor

When you’re in the writing groove, you get caught up in a wonderful creative flow determining your characters’ personalities and roles and following that story arc to the perfect ending. But you can’t focus on all of that and have flawless grammar and spelling. Even if you were in honors English throughout high school and college, passing each class with flying colors, you will still make some errors in the midst of your passionate writing.

When you read it over during your self-editing phase, you could very well catch several mistakes and fix them up, but I can guarantee you won’t catch them all. That’s because when you have worked closely on a manuscript, your mind knows what you meant to say and will often trick your eyes into seeing the correct word, phrase, or sentence, when in actuality, there may be several errors lurking in the fog. In addition, the more you work on your manuscript, going over it again and again, your eyes will start to subconsciously skim over the material, easily allowing you to overlook a typo or a missed word. Don’t worry, that’s what your editor is for!

Even your editor recognizes the need to focus on a small window at a time in order to polish your manuscript into the diamond we know is in there. It actually and truly is impossible to focus on too many things at once, and that’s why there are so many rounds to the editing process (want to learn more about The Four Types of Edits?). Each round plays a very important role in perfecting your manuscript, and each round has a different focus from the next.

What’s the Difference?

In this article, I want to focus on the two rounds that the get most confused: copyediting and proofreading. What’s the difference, and if they are so similar, do you really need both? Copyediting and proofreading both check for typos, double words, grammatical errors, spelling, formatting issues, echo words, and chapter and page numbers. Copyediting takes it another step further by also completing fact-checking and ensuring an accurate timeline. This round of edits is also often packaged with line editing (see my Services & Rates tab to learn more about this type of edit).

While very similar, copyediting and proofreading each play their own important role in your editing journey. Copyediting is the first attack on all of those pesky errors, preparing you for the homestretch of your publishing journey. But during formatting, new errors can often be introduced, especially if you wind up doing some last-minute changes or additions (even I’m guilty of this with my own book Horse Cents). Because proofreading is often done on the formatted version (or proof copy, hence the name), it should be the final step prior to publication. Providing one final fresh set of eyes to catch any lingering (or new) errors will ensure the published version is as close to error-free as humanly possible. 

So, Do You Really Need Both?

If copyediting and proofreading are so similar, do you really need both? The short answer: Yes. The long answer: It depends on how many errors your manuscript starts off with and how many you’re okay with being missed. That’s right, your editor is going to miss some errors—it’s just the nature of the beast. We are human, after all.

To minimize the amount of missed mistakes, I like to complete two passes per round of edits on my clients’ manuscripts, and yes, I still find lingering errors during my second passes. It’s just a fact that no editor is going to be able to catch 100 percent of the errors in your manuscript. Unfortunately, absolute perfectionism is just not realistic. Even traditionally published books have been known to have errors. The good news is a few minor errors should not impact the overall success of your book.

How Many Errors Will Remain?

An important factor in how many errors will get missed by your editor really depends on how clean the manuscript is when it first arrives on our desk. The Chartered Institute of Editing and Proofreading (CIEP) says, “a good copyeditor picks up 80% of errors; a good proofreader picks up 80% of what’s left.” That would bring the concluding percentage to about 96% of errors that were caught and corrected. That sounds pretty good, right?

Let’s take a look at what that number really means. If you start with 100 errors and decide to have your manuscript copyedited and proofread (good choice!), theoretically you should only have about 4 remaining errors when both editing phases are completed. However, if you decide to only have one of these services performed, you’re looking at about 20 errors remaining. 

Now, let’s be realistic. When you are putting thousands of words on paper (or on screen), you’re likely to have much more than just 100 errors. How do those numbers change if, for example, you start with 2,000 errors? While your copyeditor should catch about 1,600 of those, they will also likely miss about 400 errors. That’s pretty substantial! If you have a proofreader look it over after your copyeditor, you’re still looking at about 80 remaining errors (but now 1,920 have been caught and corrected!).

While I strive to have a higher rate of corrected errors than 80% (that seems low!), this is exactly why I highly recommend having a separate proofreader look over the final product after your copyeditor completes their round. Just like how you get too familiar with your own work to be able to edit it completely by yourself, your editor could also become complacent with your manuscript if they are touching it too many times. A fresh set of eyes greatly improves the number of errors caught and corrected. 

How Can You Limit Errors?

A self-edit or two in addition to running it through something like Grammarly or ProWritingAid prior to handing it off to your editor can increase the accuracy of the end-result of your manuscript. But don’t make the mistake of thinking that these programs can completely replace editors either. Language is an incredibly complex beast with all sorts of vague rules and homonyms (words that sound the same, but have different meanings). These are the things that only a human can properly interpret and ensure accuracy for. Seriously, think about a time when Word’s Spelling & Grammar check made some crazy suggestion that was not at all correct or what you were going for (autocorrect, anyone?). You simply can’t replace a human with a machine when it comes to proper grammar.

Ready to Begin Your Editing Journey?

I am passionate about each book I work on and feel secondhand pride when I see my clients hitting big milestones and receiving positive reviews. I would love to help you with the first couple of rounds of edits, and am happy to suggest a couple of proofreaders for that final step as well. Contact Me today so we can discuss your manuscript! I look forward to hearing from you, and in the meantime, happy writing!

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Red Quill Editorial LLC

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