5 Golden Steps for Newbie Copy-editors
Text editing means “tidying up” a particular material. Unlike proofreading, article editing has multiple tasks to perform such as working on the language, style, presentation of thought, accuracy and consistency of presentation, depth of content. The main goal of this process is to “polish” the material, to make it as readable and interesting as possible.
Step 1. Lexical check.
At this stage, it is necessary to carefully verify the legitimacy of the use of certain words, and if the text seems to you unnecessarily long and you deem it reasonable to shorten the text, shorten it without compromising its quality. As a rule, with almost any editing of the text, 5% - 15% of the material can be significantly “trimmed” or improved. Carefully ensure that the same sentence does not contain the same or same root words.
For example, the sentence “Hiking gave us nice feelings to go on” is better optimized to “Hiking nicely impressed us to go on.”
Step 2. Stylistic editing.
At this stage of editing, it is necessary that all the text be brought to a single stylistic format and compliance with the theme. Stylistic format is a single format for the presentation of material. For example, you should not start a text in a business style, and end it in an ironic one.
Step 3. Compliance with the theme.
It is necessary to strictly monitor that the style of presentation of the material organically fits into the theme of the text. For example, when talking about the banking sector, you need to be able to write for a certain audience, have business writing skills, some special terms. And, on the contrary, when creating a text for elementary school students, it is necessary to take into account the real possibilities of the audience, making the text as “simple" as possible for mastering.
Step 4. Structural Editing.
At this stage, it is necessary to edit the text in accordance with the requirements of competent design of the text structure. Make sure paragraphs are not too large and logically complete. At the same stage, you need to check the subheadings, create lists, and so on.
Step 5. Final editing.
You ultimately verify the truth of the information provided, look for typos, factual errors (incorrect numbers, dates, and so on).
After completion of the text editing process, the material is should be read aloud to verify readability of it. After all these procedures, the text is considered edited.