My services include a range of editing phases to support you in delivering refined and professional work. I welcome inquiries and invite you to send me an email to discuss how I may be of service for your project.
- Manuscript Evaluation
A manuscript evaluation offers feedback in broad strokes with specific examples to substantiate points on structure, style, content, gaps in logic, research, or plot, narrative pacing, what is just right, what is too much, what needs more development. An evaluation can help you polish your work and optimize its potential; although, it does not guarantee publication. - Structural Editing
– Assess and assist the big picture: structure, organization, content, coherence, and logic.
– Recognize the need for permissions, the optimum format to convey information, and the most effective placement of visual elements.
– Negotiate, query, or implement suggestions for suitable length, applicable citation of sources, problematic material, audience-appropriate format, or gaps in research or information. - Stylistic Editing
– Attend to a more refined scope: clarify meaning, enhance flow, and identify infelicitous phrasing.
– The focus shifts to appropriate reading level, paragraph structure and transitions, sentence length and syntax, word choice and clarity.
– Negotiate, query, or implement suggestions to ensure the author’s intention is met and communicated clearly in a style suited for the target audience.
- Copy Editing
– Closer scrutiny still. Attend to the established style and the mechanics of a written work to ensure correctness, consistency, accuracy, and completeness.
– Engage rules of grammar, punctuation, and spelling, and recognize when they are purposefully spurned to best effect.
– Ensure the style is applied consistently and with refinement in diction, syntax, and grammar.
– Ensure all necessary elements are in place with consistent style for citation of sources. - Proofreading
– Before your work reaches the public, a final opportunity to catch and correct varying details that inevitably slip through the cracks.
– Beyond typos, address issues such as mislabelled images or missing text, page
cross-references.
– Correct typographical issues (bad breaks, orphans and widows, rivers in text).
– Ensure consistency of formatting (running heads, headings, accuracy of tables and figures).
I am very grateful to Paula Sarson for her editorial expertise and grace. Paula immediately understood my message and worked with me to bring my writing to a higher level. She is supportive and respectful while she guides a writer through revisions, and her care and attention to detail are outstanding. Paula Sarson is a gifted editor—and a gift to any writer.
Gerry Fostaty, As You Were: The Tragedy at Valcartier
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