Large Print Publishers Editing and Proofreading Services

Large print is not a book with the type scaled up. Increase the point size on a 400-page novel and it becomes a 900-page object nobody can hold, with paragraphs that break badly, tables that no longer fit the page and running heads colliding with the text block. Every large print edition is a set of decisions about what changes and what must not, made on behalf of readers who are frequently older, sometimes reading with magnification as well, and who are not asking for a simplified book — only a readable one.

We edit what large print publishers and accessible edition producers produce — typographic and layout specifications, house standards for point size, leading, measure and typeface, decisions on hyphenation and justification, guidance on handling tables, footnotes, sidebars and captions at larger sizes, volume splitting plans and their continuity requirements, front matter and running head conventions, edition statements and library metadata, guidance for authors and publishers supplying source files, procurement and tender responses for library supply contracts, catalogue copy for large print editions, and reader-facing information about the format. Our editors work on the editorial decisions the format forces, not only on the specification.

The volume split is the decision that most affects the reader and gets the least attention. A novel running to three large print volumes must break somewhere, and breaking at the point where the page count happens to reach the binding limit puts a volume boundary in the middle of a chapter, or worse, immediately after a cliffhanger the reader must then wait for the library to supply. We work on these so breaks fall at part or chapter boundaries wherever the extent allows, so each volume carries enough front matter to be usable on its own — the character list, the map, the note on the text — because a reader will not have volume one to hand, so running heads identify the volume as well as the book, and so the catalogue and spine make the sequence unmistakable. We also decide explicitly what is reset rather than reflowed: a table that cannot work at 16 point becomes a list, and that is an editorial change which belongs in a note rather than happening silently.

Everything you send is treated in confidence, including licensed source files and material under embargo. We are editors rather than typographers or accessibility auditors, and we offer no view on conformance with any standard or on the typographic specification itself. What we can do is make the editorial decisions the format requires, consistently, and record them so the next title in the series matches.