Editing and Proofreading

Copyediting

Copyediting, the stage before typesetting, ensures that your text is consistent, clear and correct. Your document is likely to be in Word or another format that’s easily edited, so changes will be fairly simple to make. There are likely to be two stages: a first pass, where I ask questions about your style and meaning, and execute the main edit, tracking changes for you to review, and a clean-up stage, where I implement the answers I get from you and tidy everything up.

Proofreading

Hard-copy mark-up is a lot of fun, but these days you’re more likely to present a proofreader like me with a PDF. Either format, or any other, is fine. Trust me to tease out those final problems before you introduce your text to the world.

Testimonials

I am so grateful to Cathy for editing a book and an academic article for me. She is so efficient and thorough, it’s startling! When you think you’ve covered everything, Cathy reads the manuscript closely and attentively and picks up those details you have missed that require correction. Yet she remains respectful of the document, so you feel supported and helped. That’s a rare skill.

- Dr Josie McSkimming, University of New South Wales, Sydney, Australia

Cathy is far and away the best copy-editor with whom I have ever worked. She is highly professional, and the manuscript was greatly improved after her editing. In addition to catching errors, Cathy’s revisions improved the readability of the book significantly. She made me feel like I was collaborating with a colleague. I highly recommend her!

- Dr Jon Davidann, Professor of History, Hawai’i Pacific University and author of six books

I was invited to write a second edition of my health psychology textbook. Once I was happy with my draft, the publisher sent it to Cathy for editing and proofreading. It is always a little bit scary handing over your hard work to someone else. I need not have worried. Cathy was polite, clear and kind with her feedback. Her proofreading was thorough, and her editing was sensitive. On occasion she employed gentle humour; my favourite track change comment was something like: ‘I fear that this is on the edge of being a word’. And she was absolutely right. Every time. Her hard work, eagle eyes and diligence made my writing better. I recommend her to you, without hesitation.

- Dr Karen Rodham, Professor of Health Psychology, Department of Psychology, Staffordshire University

As a non-native English speaker, I have been working with Cathy Tingle successfully for many years and I am absolutely thrilled by her professional, fast and reliable work! She is not ‘simply’ a careful proofreader, but also shows an understanding for topics and context, which once again improves the quality of the articles.

- Prof. Dr Christoph Barmeyer, Lehrstuhl für Interkulturelle Kommunikation, Universität Passau (Chair Intercultural Communication, University of Passau, Germany)