English editing
Monograph & book chapter editing
Long books fail on consistency, not on grammar. We edit with a written style sheet so that a decision taken in chapter two still holds in chapter eleven.
What changes when the manuscript is a book
A journal article is short enough to hold in your head. A 90,000-word monograph is not. Over eighteen months of drafting, the same person will spell a place name three ways, gloss a term in chapter one and assume it in chapter nine, and number tables in two incompatible systems. A press copy-editor will find all of it, and will charge you time to fix it after acceptance.
The style sheet
Before editing starts, your editor builds a style sheet for the project and sends it to you: spelling variants, capitalisation rules, transliteration conventions, how dates and numbers are set, how you refer to recurring people, places and concepts, and how the notes and bibliography are handled. You approve it, and every chapter is edited against it.
You keep the style sheet. It goes to your press, to a translator, or to the co-editor of your next volume, and it is the single most useful thing you will get out of the project after the edited text.
Scholarly apparatus
- Footnotes and endnotes checked for style, placement and duplication
- Short-title and ibid. chains verified against first full citations
- Bibliography reconciled with every cited work; uncited entries flagged
- Block quotations, ellipses, interpolations and translation conventions made consistent
- Figure, table, map and plate numbering checked against captions and cross-references
- Index term list compiled on request as the edit proceeds
Delivery in stages
Books are delivered chapter by chapter, on a schedule we agree at the start, so you can be revising chapter three while your editor is working on chapter six. Payment follows the same stages — you are not asked for the whole fee before you have seen any edited text.
Edited volumes and single chapters
If you are contributing one chapter to someone else's volume, send the volume editor's style instructions with it and we will edit to them. If you are the volume editor, we can edit all contributions against one style sheet so that the book reads as a book, and flag substantive inconsistencies between chapters for you to resolve with the contributors.
At a glance
- Under 40,000 words
- USD 22 / 1,000
- Over 40,000 words
- USD 20 / 1,000
- Over 100,000 words
- Quoted individually
- Style sheet
- Included
- Delivery
- Chapter by chapter
- Payment
- In stages
Send two sample chapters and the table of contents for an accurate quote and schedule.
How a book project runs
Sample & quote
You send two chapters and the contents. We edit 1,000 words free, then quote a fixed price and a delivery schedule.
Style sheet
Your editor drafts the style sheet from the sample chapters. You approve or amend it before full editing begins.
Chapter passes
Chapters arrive edited on the agreed dates, each with its queries listed, so you can revise in parallel.
Consolidation
A final pass across the whole manuscript catches cross-chapter inconsistency, then front matter and apparatus are checked.
Common questions
Can you work to a specific press's house style?
Yes. Send the press's style guidance with the manuscript — most academic publishers issue one — and it becomes the basis of the project style sheet. Where the press is silent, we apply the style guide you choose and record the decision.
My manuscript uses transliterated Bengali, Sanskrit or Arabic terms. Can you handle that?
Yes. Transliteration is a style-sheet decision: we record the scheme you are using, whether diacritics are retained, how plurals and possessives are formed on transliterated words, and which terms are italicised on first use only. Consistency is then checked mechanically across the whole manuscript.
Do you compile the index?
We compile a term list as the edit proceeds if you ask for it, which saves considerable time later. A full back-of-book index against final page proofs is separate specialist work and is quoted per project.
What if I revise chapters after you have edited them?
Send the revised sections and we edit the new text at the per-word rate. Text we have already edited and you have not changed is not charged again.
Free 1,000-word sample for book projects
Book-length work deserves a longer sample than an article does. Send a chapter opening and we will return 1,000 words edited, with the style questions your project will raise.