MY SERVICES:
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What They’re Saying:“Your edit was tremendously helpful. You made some great saves, and your corrections and notes were spot-on. It was great to work with you – thanks for catching all those picky little details!”Emma McKay, ECW Press, Toronto |
So how expensive is this?
Professional editors subdivide the work they do into a number of different levels. Here are some standard industry guidelines:
| Proofreading: | $40-$50 per hour | |
| Copy editing: | $50-$60 per hour | |
| Structural editing: | $60-70 per hour | |
| Rewriting: | $70-80 per hour |
Why such a spread of rates? My own fees depend on a number of factors, such as:
- the complexity of your project
- the tightness of your deadline
- how busy I am right now
- whether we’ve worked together before
- the size of your budget
- the quality of your writing
That last point is the most important. Making your document look as good as you want it to sometimes takes a lot of time and effort, and sometimes less – depending on what challenges it presents.
There can be a difference of up to $40 an hour between the least-demanding work (simple proofreading) and the most time-consuming (structural editing). For some useful tips on keeping your costs down, check out How Can I Pay You Less?
Below is a short description of what each editing level involves, plus a link to the guidelines of the Editors’ Association of Canada (EAC).
The latest, lightest, least-intrusive level of editing. Generally, work is proofread just before it’s sent off to the printer – at which time it’s usually too late (or too expensive) to tinker with grammar or structure. By then, the work should already have been through at least one level of editing; and if the earlier editor(s) did their job properly, there should be very little for the proofreader to catch.
But that “little” is important: this is the last-chance edit, and the proofreader is usually the final buffer between the editorial process and the typesetter. Any errors not caught at this point usually get passed on to the reading public – an awful prospect for a professional.
Generally speaking, proofread material should contain no more than three or four red-pen marks or corrections per page. Anything more than that is usually a copy edit in disguise.
(View the EAC Standards for Proofreading)
This is the catch-all process most commonly referred to as “editing.” It means taking all necessary steps to identify and correct errors in spelling, usage, grammar, punctuation and style; and also to make sure that the text layout is consistent – that one heading looks the same as the next, and that formatting guidelines are followed throughout.
(View the EAC Standards for Copy Editing)
Structural editing (sometimes also called substantive or stylistic editing) is much more thorough than copy editing. One major difference is this: a copy editor corrects what IS there, but a substantive editor goes one step further and also checks for what’s NOT there – a transition between one topic and another, a missing step in an argument, a gap in the information provided, etc. This deep-level editing often also involves restructuring the text to make it flow better, reorganizing material to better effect, and so on.
Substantive editors frequently also check the length of the document. A magazine story that’s 500 words too long for its space, for instance, can be trimmed to fit at this level. (A good editor can nearly always cut word count, sometimes by up to 30%, with no loss of meaning – merely by tightening the material and deleting anything that doesn’t contribute.)
(View the EAC Standards for Structural Editing)
Sometimes a project calls for more drastic measures than just tidying up the existing text. There can be several reasons for this:
- Material may have been written for a specific target audience – perhaps a conference of economists, for example – and may then have to be adapted for a general readership. Rewriting can make the text easier to understand.
- Copy for a report may have been provided by a dozen different writers, but the finished document should have a “common look and feel.” If a single person rewrites the material, it sounds more unified.
- Sometimes, text is just so muddled or poorly expressed that the only way to fix it is to completely rewrite it.
(EAC has no official standards for rewriting, since this activity is not, technically speaking, "editing" work.)
