Services

Copy editing

Cathy’s long experience and training in copy editing ensures that all aspects of your work are up to the highest standard before you submit to publishers or agents or before you self-publish. Her knowledge of grammar, punctuation, style, and syntax are second-to-none in the industry.

Proofreading

If you have already had copy editing done on your manuscript, Cathy can provide a thorough last proofreading so you can have peace of mind knowing no typos or other errors remain.

Love of the written word

Above all, Cathy loves words and language. Evocative metaphors and beautiful, spot-on phrasing give her a thrill. Her thesaurus is a dear old friend. Trust your written words to someone who will treasure them and coax out the best.

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Testimonials

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Testimonials

I have had the pleasure of working with Cathy for the past eight years. I have intentionally looked for opportunities to have Cathy do editing work for the content I’m responsible for managing and she has never disappointed. She returns everything we send her in a timely manner and I can always count on her for a thorough edit. Additionally, Cathy genuinely cares about the content she works on and is so pleasant to interact with.

Morgan Jones Pearson
LDS Living Contributing Editor

Cathy has been a dependable copy editor for our magazine for over a year. She is able to adapt quickly to changing schedules and quick turnaround times without losing any quality to her work. I’ve appreciated her enthusiasm for helping to perfect grammar so that a manuscript’s message can shine.

Emily Abel

Associate editor of LDS Living magazine

Cathy did a wonderful job editing my manuscript. She was quick to respond to my questions, thorough in her work, and finished ahead of schedule. She made comments on my writing that demonstrated she had gone above and beyond in researching the specific locations and dates in my manuscript. She was kind, approachable, and professional and I would gladly work with her again!

Emily Hinchey

author of  The Portrait

What’s the difference between
copy editing & proofreading ?

Though they are similar,
there are some major differences between the two.

Copy editing

Copy editing exists to make sure a book or article is accurate in every way. Editors will check to be sure grammar, spelling, punctuation, syntax, style, and usage are correct. They also may share suggestions on more-readable phrasing, better words to express your intended meaning, or fixes on names or places. Copy editing is a very thorough look at various layers of your nearly finished product. Some people and organizations refer to it as line editing.

Copy editing is not developmental editing; that comes earlier in the writing process.

Developmental editors help with the “big picture.” A developmental editor will guide you in making the story itself flow well and make sense, addressing plot holes, confusing dialogue, and poor character development. That’s not my specialty.

or

Proofreading

Proofreading is a final step that may or may not be used in the editing process. A proofreader will generally look over a work to be sure typos were fixed and nothing slipped through and didn’t get corrected in copyediting. It’s not nearly as in-depth, just a last check.

Still Have Questions?

And what is style?

Style is an element of copy editing in which an editor adheres to specific rules for capitalization, spelling, punctuation, hyphenation, and abbreviation, as well as how to write numbers. There could be a few ways of writing any of these elements that would be considered “correct” in general, and which most readers (eagle-eyed retired English teachers, for instance) would not recognize as “wrong” or “right.”

Broadly speaking, different types of publishers (newspapers, magazines, books) generally use different styles. The most common are Associated Press style for newspapers and some magazines and Chicago Manual of Style for books and magazines. Often, organizations will have their own in-house style guides to use that supplement the major styles.

Since Chicago style is common and well-accepted, this is the style guide I have chosen to use in copy editing. (Incidentally, different organizations style "copy editing" differently! If I were adhering strictly to Chicago style for this site, I would style it as one word: copyediting. But since it's often styled as two words elsewhere, I'm going with what's most commonly seen on the web.)

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