EDITING INSIGHT

Helen Corner-Bryant’s article ‘All about the edits’ (WM Feb) clarified something that had been puzzling me for some time. I knew that editing and proof reading were not the same thing and that there were layers of editing I knew nothing about but it finally dawned on me why some books, both traditionally and self published, were so unsatisfactory. We self publishers always hope that having a beta reader (or two) and a proof reader is sufficient. We expect to be able to read through our own work four or five times and find the errors, but reading about the different forms of editing made me realise we probably don’t have the level of expertise necessary. I have found both continuity errors and name change errors in books I have published after the event, and have tightened up on spacing mistakes over the years but, if I ever write another novel, I shall try to find editors who can cover all the elements in Helen’s article. There is always more to learn about our craft and you are a great help.

JULIE C ROUND Worthing, West Sussex

Thank you for defining the differences between developmental editing, line editing, copy editing and proofreading.

I am a newspaper editor who once oversaw a reporter who was headstrong that they did not want me doing any ‘developmental editing’ to their news stories. Through these definitions, it’s clearer to me that they disapproved of any line editing done to their work. Often I modified their writing style to improve readability for our broad public audience.

M. WHITNEY Washington state, USA