Proofreading Service

Various flowering weeds, including purple dead nettle, growing in a garden.

Proofreading roots out those pesky typographical weeds
so that your words can bask in the sunlight.

A weed stalk growing over a dormant lawn in autumn. The weed has four light-pink flowers.

Scope of the Service

I proofread raw Microsoft Word manuscripts or typeset PDF manuscripts.* This service provides the following, as appropriate for your manuscript:

  • [Word files only]: Applying standard manuscript formatting to your text

  • Flagging continuity and consistency concerns

  • Ensuring stylistic consistency and applying standard grammar, punctuation, and spelling guidelines

  • Fact-checking historical dates and events, potential anachronisms, basic principles of science and mathematics, and spellings of proper nouns (personal, place, and brand names)

  • Adhering to an existing style sheet, if present, or creating a new style sheet that collects your specific style preferences, manuscript-specific terminology, and character names

  • [Typeset PDFs only]: Checking for visual errors in the layout, including but not limited to bad breaks, stacks, ladders, orphans, and widows.

*Note: I only proofread books that have been previously professionally copyedited.

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Stages of the Service

1. Full editorial round

During this round, I’ll use Word’s comment feature and tracked changes (if the manuscript is in Microsoft Word) or Adobe’s markup tools (if the manuscript is a typeset PDF) to make or suggest appropriate revisions. I’ll also add notes to your existing style sheet (if present) or create a new style sheet for your manuscript.

Unless you wish otherwise, I’ll explain my grammatical edits using comments. I’ll leave these comments on the first instance of a particular category of edit, so it’s likely that there will be many such comments toward the beginning of the manuscript and few toward the end.

2. Author review round

During this round, you’ll be able to respond to questions posed during the editorial round and make adjustments as needed. If you would like, I offer one hour of video, voice, or email support after you receive your marked-up manuscript, editorial report, and style sheet.

If the manuscript is a typeset PDF, you should use this round to implement any edits/changes you approve, based on my markup during the full editorial round. You can then generate a new, updated PDF to send back to me.

3. Reconciliation round

During this round, I’ll make any further edits necessary (for instance, correcting typos in material you’ve added or revised) and remove all comments and tracked changes. I’ll return this clean manuscript to you so that you’re ready for your next step.

If your manuscript is in a typeset PDF, I’ll review your revisions to check for potential resulting visual or typographical errors, and I’ll use Adobe’s markup tools once again to flag any further changes that you may need to make.