The Nuts and Bolts Edit

A Stage 2 copy-edit on your travel manuscript

A Nuts and Bolts Edit focuses on the clarity and consistency of your travel book’s language. It’s a technical edit that smooths and corrects your text line by line, attending to punctuation, grammar, repetition and style.

In a nutshell: A professional makeover, delivered to the same high standards demanded by my publisher clients.

Not to be confused with: A proofread, which happens after a book has been copy-edited and formatted.

Best for: A travel book that’s had its big-picture issues resolved and is ready for a serious polish.

As part of the Stage 2 copy-edit I will:

• Correct spelling, punctuation, grammar and syntax.
• Make spellings, capitalisation, hyphenation and punctuation consistent throughout: for example, if the text has both ‘Beijing’ and ‘Peking’ or ‘bus stop’ and ‘bus-stop’.
• Check spellings of foreign place names.
• Make sure that measurements are presented consistently: for example, miles or kilometres, pounds or kilograms.
• Ensure that dialogue is styled and punctuated correctly.
• Highlight unintended stylistic tics: for example, perhaps you’ve used the adjective ‘stunning’ three times in a single page, or maybe you begin too many chapters with ‘After breakfast, I…’.
• Query phrasing that’s unclear, awkward, repetitive or clichéd.
• Highlight probable factual inaccuracies
• Apply a set of basic Word styles to chapter headings and subheadings, first and subsequent paragraphs, dialogue and chapter breaks.

What you’ll get:

• A manuscript that’s been polished to a high professional standard so that its language is clear and elegant and a credit to your storytelling.
• An edited file in which all the copy-edits have been made visible, using Word’s Track Changes facility, so that you can ‘accept’ or ‘reject’ each edit in turn should you choose to do so.
• A set of Style Notes listing decisions on style conventions that have been applied consistently to the manuscript: for example, regarding variant spellings, hyphenation, and whether you italicise foreign words. These notes will also be useful for your proofreader.
• A Word List detailing spellings that are particular to your book: for example, place names, people’s names and dialect words. This list will also help your proofreader.
• A summary of basic Word Styles applied to your manuscript: for example, styles distinguishing between a main heading and a subheading. This summary will be helpful when it comes to formatting your book for publication.

Price: Between £15 and £25 per 1000 words, subject to manuscript sample and total word count.

Request a quote: Please contact me to tell me about your travel book and request a quote.

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