Proofreading
You are this close to publishing. You’ve had your book edited (Developmental Editing, Stage 1) and you have rewritten the sections recommended. Your book has even been Line Edited (Stage 2)
In fact, you are one step away from publishing. The only thing left is a final proofread – a thorough read to catch all spelling, grammar, and punctuation issues.
The typical stages of editing are:
You are at Stage 3, Proofreading. Many authors question the need for a proofreader, particularly after their book has received not only a developmental edit but also a line edit (Stages 1 and 2). To answer this, think about books you may have read that had an intriguing story, but you struggled to finish the book because it was riddled with spelling, punctuation, and grammatical errors that not only annoyed you but also interrupted the flow of the story. Proofreading, good proofreading, prevents this potential downfall to your book.
The proofreading stage (Stage 3) provides the final polish to your book, and is the last stage before it is ready to be ‘published.’
Some of the things I include in a basic proofread are:
- Incorrectly structured sentences
- Manuscript formatting
- Spacing of letters, sentences, and paragraphs
- Spelling, grammatical, and punctuation errors
- Typographical errors (“typos”)
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