define copyediting

Copyediting | Proofreading | The Four Levels of Editing

The Difference Between Copyediting and Proofreading
ByThe Editing Institute May 27, 2026May 27, 2026

Countless times throughout your editing career, a client will ask you to “proofread” something. Then they’ll send you a Microsoft Word document full of grammatical errors, inconsistent capitalization, and heading styles that change from chapter to chapter. They don’t want proofreading; they want copyediting. And if you don’t know the difference between copyediting and proofreading,…

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The Four Levels of Editing

The Four Levels of Editing: The American Standard
ByThe Editing Institute May 23, 2026May 28, 2026

If you’ve spent any time in editing or writing communities, you’ve noticed it: The same words mean different things depending on who’s using them. The four levels of editing—developmental, line, copyediting, and proofreading—have never been standardized in the United States, and the result is genuine confusion across the profession. One person’s “copyediting” is another’s “line…

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