Macro Editing vs. Micro Editing vs. Proofreading
Photo by Anne Karakash on Pixabay
Virtually every freelance writer I know of advertises themselves as an “editor” as well as a writer, and I’m no exception. It simply goes with the territory. While I can’t recall ever being hired by a client just to edit, I’m invariably asked at one point or another to edit other people’s work. And I always mention that I’m happy to do this. I consider it an important part of what I do for a living.
I’m a very good editor – probably the best I know. That’s because I’ve been doing it for as long as I can remember. As a young thing I edited school newspapers and the like. As a research scholar I edited journal articles and people’s theses. Heck, even when I was waiting tables, it was invariably me who was pointing out spelling mistakes in menus, signage, and the like. It seems to be in my DNA.
That’s not to say I don’t make mistakes. My master’s thesis has a typo in it – not on the first page, but close enough to it that I was mortified when it came out in print. In fairness to me, none of my multiple editors spotted it either, but now when I crack it open, it’s the only thing I see.
Further on in my career, I also made mistakes, but more often a different kind of mistake: doing too much editing. In the past I’ve wasted both my own time and clients or employers’ time by going to town on a document, editing vast sections of text, when all they really wanted was a proofread. This can be a real problem when senior management has already approved certain key message, in a certain wording, only to have some stupid editor barge in and change everything just because they preferred the sound of something else.
Less often, I’ve made the reverse mistake of doing too little. I recently applied for a job with the Government of Alberta, for which there was a writing test, which involved “editing” a government news release. I approached the document with a light touch, tidying up sentences that needed tidying up and generally tightening the copy, and ultimately ended up hearing back that they were looking for me to radically restructure the release. Suffice it to say, I didn’t get that job.
While I take responsibility for these mistakes – it’s ultimately the editor’s job to ask what level of edit a client or employer is looking for – I do sometimes wish people could be more specific when they ask me to edit something. Do you really want me to edit this document, or do you simply want me to proofread it? And if you do want me to edit it for real, what level of editing are we looking for?
There are actually quite a few different levels of editing, levels that can broadly be divided into two categories: macro editing and micro editing. Here are the different levels as I’ve come to understand them.
Developmental Editing
Also called “conceptual editing” or “manuscript appraisal”, this is typical starting point for a written document once the first draft is completed. Developmental editing can even be applied to a preliminary outline (as opposed to a fully written piece) and is focused squarely on ideas, organization, and structure rather than anything grammatical or stylistic.
Such editing may involve moving and restructuring entire paragraphs, altering thesis statements and other major content changes. Developmental editors should be asking themselves questions such as:
Is any important information being left out?
Is there any redundant or unnecessary information that could be cut?
Is the main purpose of the piece of writing being lost due to excessive information or organizational problems?
This type of “big picture” editing is typically carried out early in a document’s development and does not necessarily need to be undertaken by an editing/proofreading specialist. It’s usually best done by a subject matter expert, although it can also be useful to receive such editing help from somebody outside the project who may bring fresh perspective.
Evaluation Editing
Evaluation editing (also called “structural editing”) is similar to developmental editing, but in this case requires a completed written project as opposed to just an outline. In an evaluation edit, the editor typically provides a broad critique of the written product in terms of tone, style, and organization. Questions to ask oneself when engaged in this process include:
Does this piece of writing achieve its stated goal?
Does everything here make sense?
Can I neatly summarize the piece?
As with a developmental edit, an evaluation edit is, in many cases, best carried out by somebody who is well grounded in the relevant subject matter, although again it can be useful to get some outside perspective. Again, this does not touch fine-grain details like work choice and grammar.
Content Editing
Depending on your level of expertise or the length of the piece of writing in question, the editing process for a document may well start at this point. By this point, the basic structure of a piece of writing will be sorted out and the focus will be on the flow within paragraphs. Questions typically asked when doing this include:
Is the overall tone of the writing appropriate for the intended reader?
Are the paragraphs structured in a consistent way (e.g. all have topic sentences and are roughly consistent in length)?
Are the key messages in place?
Is the document itself formatted correctly (e.g. consistent headings, spaces between paragraphs)?
Content editing is the point on the editing continuum where documents are checked to ensure they are not overly academic in tone (if intended for the general public) or overladen with professional jargon. Markups at this level will not provide detailed corrections but rather indicate places where material should be rewritten or restructured.
For writing destined for online consumption, this is where the heavy-duty search engine optimization (SEO) work is done. More on this in future blog posts.
Line Editing
Also called “substantive” copyediting, line editing is when the document is finally put under the microscope and edited for word choice and sentence flow. Line editing typically involves the most substantive markup of a document, encapsulating the first round of word usage and grammar error capturing.
This is the point where one seeks to flag the following:
Run-on sentences and sentence fragments
Clichés, jargon and other inappropriate or incorrect word choices
Obvious grammatical errors and convoluted syntax
Depending on the size and scope (and importance) of the document in question, line editing can be undertaken together with copyediting as a single step in this process. For long documents (e.g. book manuscripts) and documents of high importance (e.g. annual reports), it can be useful to undertake these two steps separately.
Copyediting
At this point there should be no major changes to wording or structure. Copyediting should be laser-focused on the fine details of the text, with a focus on spelling, punctuation, and the minutiae of grammar. If line editing is where one catches the sloppy mistakes everyone makes, copyediting is where the fine details that most people don’t catch are caught.
Copyediting at this level should ideally be done in the format in which the document will appear as a final product (e.g., as a PDF with all the graphic content included).
Questions a copyeditor asks themselves at this point include:
Are all the page numbers correct and consistent with the table of contents?
Is all the punctuation correct and consistent?
Have I checked for common spelling mistakes that a word processor spellchecker typically misses? (e.g. “pubic” vs. “public”)
Are the spelling, capitalization, italicization, and punctuation consistent with the organization’s style guide?
If the content is intended for online use, do all the hyperlinks work?
For online content, are all the elements needed for online accessibility (like alt text for images and correct heading orders) in place?
If the content includes financial, statistical, or other numeric data, have these numbers been checked by the person who provided them for typos?
At this point in the editing process, there should not be any more substantive word choice edits and the like. If you attempting to copyedit and you are encountering a lot of word usage issues, more in the way of substantive copyediting (line editing) is clearly required. If major structural problems remain, a return to the content editing phase may be required.
While copyediting need not necessarily be done by somebody with a lot of editing experience, it should be undertaken by someone who is well versed in the organization’s style guide, or who at least has access to it. In the case of an annual report or some other document with important financial and other statistical data, it is vital that a person in the relevant department see the document to ensure all the data has been rendered correctly in graphs and so on.
Proofreading
This is the last and, arguable, the most important phase in the editing process. It is also the only step which should always be done separately from other steps. Whereas evaluation and content editing can be grouped together, and line editing and copyediting likewise, the final proofread should always be done as its own separate step for any public-facing document.
Proofreading is intended as the final line of defence against typos and other minor errors that the copyeditor may have missed. Unlike copyediting, proofreading is typically (and ideally) done in the document’s intended final print format, complete with figures, graphs, tables, illustrations, and other visuals. In addition to writing errors, a proofreader should also be looking for:
Typos and small grammatical mistakes that have slipped through
Inconsistent spacing, font sizes, headings etc.
Page numbering mistakes or numbering errors in the table of contents
Bad line or page breaks
Missing photo credits (if applicable)
Missing alt text (if applicable)
Typos in figures and graphs, footnotes/endnotes, bibliography etc.
Broken hyperlinks (if applicable)
This phase of the editing process should ideally not be done by the same person who did the copyediting. Ideally, especially for a very important public-facing document (like an annual report), more than one person should serve in a proofreading capacity. At this point it can be useful to enlist help from outside sources who have never seen the content in question before.
For a person in the position of having to proofread a document that they themselves have written or otherwise spent extensive time on, it is a good proofreading practice to proof the document in a different context than it was written/edited, perhaps in pen with a printed copy rather than on a computer, and perhaps even in a different room or office than the usual work setting, for a welcome shift in perspective.
Reviewing
Reviewing is process distinct from both editing and proofreading, and one that may or may not be required, depending on the context. For corporate publications and documents written for academia (i.e., peer-reviewed journals), documents may require approval by external readers, be they peer reviewers in the case of a scholarly publication or board members in the case of an annual report and the like.
Depending on the reviewers’ feedback, the document’s owner may have to revert to a prior stage of editing, even going as far back as developmental editing in unusual cases. Regardless, any document sent to external reviewers should have gone through the entire editorial process, up to and including proofreading, and the owner should be able to vouch for the document’s freedom from errors.
Macroediting vs. Microediting
Most people won’t need to know the distinctions between all these levels of editing. Broadly speaking, developmental editing, evaluation editing, and content editing can be characterized as “macro editing” – big-picture stuff – whereas line editing and copyediting constitute “micro editing”. As we’ve seen here, proofreading is an entirely separate process from editing and should be thought of as a final line of defence when all the serious editing work has been completed.
What About Style Guides?
I should probably write a whole separate blog post about the importance of style guides and how to write one. Suffice it to say, if you’re a company or organization that produces a lot of written material and you don’t already have a style guide, you should probably develop one, or hire someone to do so. I’ve written numerous style guides in my years as a writer and editor and would be happy to help your organization develop one.
Doubtless you already have conventions when it comes to writing. A style guide will help you formalize these conventions and ensure that new hires have a how-to guide on how to be on brand for your company or organization.
Should I Edit and Proofread on Paper or Screen?
This is entirely a matter of personal choice. Personally, when I’m micro editing or proofreading something that’s a) very long or b) very important (or both), I prefer to print the document out and do the work by hand. There’s something about pen and paper that sharpens my senses and gives me extra focus. I definitely don’t recommend doing this while macro editing, as it’s far easier to reorganize content on a computer than on a piece of paper.
Why Should I Care About All This?
When you’re hiring a writer, you’re also invariably hiring an editor. As such, it’s worth asking your prospective hire about their editing process and what their understanding of the different levels of editing are. Suffice it to say I didn’t know all this stuff ten years ago, and I was a less good editor then than I am now because of it.
Editing may be the forgotten stepchild of writing but it’s serious business. We’ve all seen cringe-inducing typos on official signage, important documents, or even tattoos – stuff that doesn’t go away easily – and everyone wants to avoid this. Also, in an age where online accessibility is being increasingly prioritized (and legislated in many places), plain language communication with correct formatting is now a must. And until AI can do all this for us, it’s up to us humans to do it.
As for me, I’m always happy to take on your editing needs as well as your writing needs. Contact me today if you need an eagle-eyed editor – and please do be specific about what you’re looking for.
