The Difference Between a Line Edit and a Copyedit

What the line editor does to the same sentence

Stylistic editing is a different standard with a different list. Editors Canada asks the stylistic editor to refine sentence structure, make wording precise, resolve ambiguity, and eliminate wordiness by deleting redundancies, empty phrases, and unnecessary modifiers.² It also asks for smooth and effective transitions between sentences and paragraphs, and for voice, style, point of view, tone, and register to be presented consistently.²

Applied to the specimen, that produces a shorter sentence. Due to the fact that becomes because. At that point in time becomes then, or disappears. Subsequently is an unnecessary modifier. By them is a passive construction whose actor is already named. The sentence survives at roughly half its length and says the same thing.

The Editorial Freelancers Association describes the two roles in the same terms from the other direction. Line editors work at the sentence or paragraph level and, like copyeditors, correct errors, but their main focus is improving the language and style of the text. Copyediting covers spelling, grammar, usage, and punctuation, checking cross-references, and preparing the style sheets that guide consistency and accuracy.³

The instruction that governs both

One standard constrains the stylistic editor more tightly than authors expect. Editors Canada's first requirement for clarity is to change only what is required.² The instruction is short and it decides a great deal.

That is what separates a line edit from a rewrite. A line editor who improves a sentence that was already clear has spent the author's money and moved the prose toward the editor's own ear. The specimen above needed the work. A sentence that says what it means in the words the author chose does not.

Why the order matters, and what it costs to reverse

Line editing before copy editing is the conventional order, and there is an arithmetic reason for it. Copy editing records decisions on a style sheet and enforces them across a manuscript. A line edit that follows will change sentences the copyeditor has already made consistent, and some of those changes will reintroduce the inconsistencies.

The EFA notes that line editing may be performed as a separate service, alongside developmental editing after the larger issues have been addressed, or together with copyediting.³ All three arrangements are normal. What is not normal is paying for a careful copyedit and then commissioning a line edit that undoes part of it.

Editors Canada records the boundary at the other end of the sequence, stating that proofreading is not a substitute for editing.⁴ The same logic applies one step earlier. A copyedit is not a smaller line edit. It is a different reading with a different list.

Choosing between them

Two questions usually settle it. Does the manuscript say what its author means, sentence by sentence? And is it internally consistent?

A manuscript failing the first needs a line edit. A manuscript failing the second needs a copyedit. A manuscript failing both needs them in that order, and a manuscript failing neither needs a proofread and nothing more.

EditFast quotes each level separately and says which one a figure covers. What the four levels change is published, and so is what each costs. Everything a client sends is treated in confidence, including unpublished manuscripts, business documents, and correspondence.

An author unsure which they need can send a page and ask what an editor would do to it. The answer is usually more informative than the label, because the label is what the two levels have most in common.