Copy Editing: What to Expect

So, you’ve survived the developmental editing process, revise the editor’s suggestions and spruced up your story. The next step in the creative journey is copy editing.

Your editor will now get to sift through your manuscript and remove all the punctuation, spelling, and grammatical errors they can find. They may also ask you to rewrite some sentences or paragraphs for flow and consistency’s sake. They will work with an in-house style manual like the Chicago Manual of Style to meet their editing standards.

If you are confused about why your editor has made certain stylistic changes to your manuscript, ask them why they did – a quality editor won’t bite your head off for being curious.