Proofreading – who it’s for

Your book has been through a professional line- and copyedit. Now you need a quality-control check before you publish.

A proofread is the final tidy-up that looks out for any problems that have slipped through previous rounds of editing and formatting. It’s the last line of defence before you go live.

If your novel hasn’t been through previous rounds of professional editing, this service probably isn’t for you.

PRICE: Subject to review of a sample
FORMAT: Microsoft Word doc or PDF

What you get

1. A full word-by-word prepub check

I'll proofread your novel line by line and fix any remaining red flags that could distract your reader. The focus will be on the following:​
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  • Consistency in design of text and image elements
  • Consistent hyphenation and capitalization
  • Dialogue punctuation
  • Highlighting of stacked hyphens
  • Homophones and homonyms
  • Pagination and chapter sequencing
  • Paragraph and section breaks
  • Problematic representation, stereotyping and othering
  • Removal of extraneous letter and line spaces
  • Standard and consistent spelling, grammar and punctuation
  • Standard paragraph indentation
  • Widows, orphans and short lines
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​2. A style sheet

In your style sheet I'll record decisions about hyphenation, numbering, capitalization, spelling, punctuation style and idiom usage.

Andy Maslen, bestselling crime author

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RELIABLE AND DILIGENT
Louise is a reliable and diligent proofreader. She consistently delivers on time and to budget and, moreover, understands the sometimes-conflicting requirements of in-house staff and authors. A true professional!

Ian Antcliff, SAGE Publishing

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Andy Maslen, bestselling crime author

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WILLING TO GO THE EXTRA MILE
Louise was great to work with. She is clearly very experienced and knowledgeable about publishing standards. I also found her flexible and responsive to an emergency situation I found myself in, and greatly appreciated her willingness to go the extra mile. I recommend her without hesitation.

Alexander Murray, independent author

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Andy Maslen, bestselling crime author

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DILIGENT, ACCURATE AND RELIABLE
We have been using Louise as a regular proofreader for around nine years, and have always found her diligent in her attitude, accurate in her work and utterly reliable on her dates.

Neil de Cort, Polity

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Guidance on inclusive and respectful writing
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This service includes a free booklet featuring resources that help writers work to actively consider whether the words in a novel are driving story forward and enriching readers, or causing unintended harm. 

​The tools linked to in this booklet aim to help you apply good judgement to your fiction from a conscious language perspective.

Fancy working with me?

If you'd like to discuss a line editing, copyediting or proofreading project, get in touch so we can have a chat.​