A Stage 2 copy-edit on your travel manuscript
The Nuts and Bolts Edit
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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I offer four different editing services for Travel writers.
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