The types of work I can help you with

Business
RFPs, white papers, reports. Line editing and proofreading: clarity, spelling, typos, cut and paste errors, light fact checking. 

Academic
Your thesis or dissertation. Line editing and proofreading: grammar and clarity; spelling, typos, cut and paste errors; verification and conformation of references and citations to the selected style guide.

Fiction
Developmental editing, which addresses the elements of your story or novel: structure and pacing; dialogue; POV; character and plot arcs; balance of description, action, and dialogue.

What you need to know

If you haven’t worked with an editor, here are some basics to keep in mind:

First, set an editing deadline for yourself that falls well before your actual deadline. Careful editing, like good writing, takes time. You need to leave the editor enough time to do your work justice. The interval between your editing and final deadline depends on the length of the work. For business and academic papers, allow at least a week.

Second, contact your editor well before the editing deadline you’ve set for yourself. Schedule a time to work on your project. This will ensure your work is reviewed by your final deadline.

Third, you need to know the style guide your work is expected to adhere to. Your publisher, academic adviser, or marketing department should know. If the publication or company has its own style guide, you’ll need to include a copy or a link to it with your work.

Formats

Word, .rtf, PDF. I save your original work and create a separate copy for my changes and margin notes. For developmental fiction I also return a separate review that discusses the elements of the story or novel. This review can be in any of the listed formats as well, just let me know what works best for you.

Rates

My rates are hourly and range from $30 to $50. The number of pages completed in an hour depends on both the level of editing requested and the condition of the document. Feel free to ask for a sample edit of your less polished pages. If your work has footnotes or citations, include those in your sample pages. This will allow us both to see what the likely page rate per hour will be.

A page equals 250 words. If the piece to be reviewed is 30,000 words, it’s going to be considered 120 pages. This is an industry standard and saves everyone from getting bogged down with variations in software, font size, and margins, which all affect the software page count.

Manuscripts that require numerous changes can take as long as an hour per page. For those that require few changes, as many as eight or ten pages might be reviewed in an hour. Getting a sample edit is a useful first step in determining the ultimate cost. If we skip that step, I’ll do a test review of a few pages and let you know the likely page rate.

Ways to save money

Run spellcheck on your document, footnotes included. It won’t catch everything but it will clear away the easiest things to correct.

If your document has footnotes or references of any kind, make sure all the titles and author names are accurate and spelled correctly. It’s also important to make sure your cites match the source materials. 

If you’re ready to get started, contact me at thedetaileye@gmail.com.

Thanks for visiting!