SUBSTANTIVE EDITING
Substantive editing takes place at the beginning of the publishing process. This type of edit ensures that your message is clear, voice is distinct, and arguments are persuasive.

• Assess the overall organization and content of the material to determine its suitability for the intended audience, medium, and purpose.
• Reorganize material as needed to achieve a logical flow of ideas.
• Rewrite material to enhance clarity, readability, and flow.
• Cut material to remove repetitive or superfluous content; add material to fill gaps in content.
• Flag factual errors for the author to fix.
• Recast material that would be better presented in a different form (e.g., recast a long series of points as a bulleted list, or number-heavy text as a table).
• Write introductions, conclusions, or transitions as needed.

COPY EDITING
Copy editing happens midway through publishing. The goal is to create a clean, clear document, free of errors that can distract and alienate readers.

• Ensure correct spelling, grammar, punctuation, and usage.
• Apply consistent style (consistent capitalization, hyphenation, and number style).
• Query or resolve factual errors, inconsistencies in logic, or biased language.
• Ensure that tables, figures, and other visual elements are consistent with the surrounding text and correctly labeled.
• Reword awkward or confusing phrases to enhance clarity and flow.
• Streamline sentences to reduce wordiness and redundancy.
• Query organizational problems.
• Check URLs, phone numbers, and email addresses.
• Resolve acronyms.
• Ensure bibliography, citations, and endnotes/footnotes are complete and correctly formatted.
• Note any text, tables, or illustrations that may require permission to reprint.

PROOFREADING
Proofreading takes place just before publication. Proofreaders perform a final quality check, catching errors that sneaked by reviewers or were introduced during design.

• Correct any typos but refrain from making structural, stylistic, or copy editing changes unless authorized to do so.
• Ensure all elements intended for layout (e.g., paragraphs, images, headings) are placed correctly.
• Check consistency and accuracy of page elements, such as headlines and subheads, bylines, headers and footers, tables of contents, page numbers, and captions.
• Ensure design specs have been followed (e.g., check alignment, type size and style, line length, space around elements, rules, use of color, appearance of hyperlinks).
• Mark any formatting irregularities (widows and orphans, overly ragged edges, ill-fitting text, bad end-of-line breaks) and suggest adjustments.

Some material has been adapted from the Professional Editorial Standards published by Editors Canada.