A line editor changes how a sentence *sounds* — rhythm, repetition, over-explanation. A copy-editor changes whether it is *correct and consistent* — grammar, spelling, house style, and the style sheet that records every decision. Both work sentence by sentence, which is why they get confused, and they are answering different questions.
Copy-editing vs line editing: what's the difference?
Same sentence, four different passes
One sentence, run through each stage. This is the clearest way to see what you are actually buying at each price.
| Pass | What it does to: 'It was at that particular point in time that I began to realise that things were, in actual fact, getting worse.' |
|---|---|
| Developmental | Queries whether this realisation belongs in chapter two at all, given it is repeated in chapter five. |
| Line edit | 'That was when I understood it was getting worse.' — rhythm restored, padding gone, meaning kept. |
| Copy-edit | Fixes 'in actual fact' to house style, flags that you spelled 'realise' with a z on page 40, and adds both to the style sheet. |
| Proofread | Catches that the sentence appears twice on page 41 after the last round of changes. |
A clean-up of your chapter
Send a chapter and we'll email it back with filler and repetition removed and paragraphing imposed — your wording untouched — plus a note on the habits worth watching. Free.
What a line editor is listening for
Rhythm, mostly. A line editor reads for the sound of the prose and the reader's experience of moving through it.
They catch: sentences that all run the same length; paragraphs that start the same way eleven times; the habit of explaining a thing you have just shown; dialogue that says what the scene already established; adverbs propping up weak verbs; and the specific and very common problem of a strong sentence followed by a weaker one that repeats it.
Good line editing is nearly invisible. The manuscript comes back sounding more like you, not less.
What a copy-editor is checking
Correctness and consistency, against a standard.
Grammar and punctuation. Spelling to a chosen convention — British or American, -ise or -ize, and consistently. Capitalisation. Hyphenation. Numbers as words or digits. Continuity: the dog's breed, the character's eye colour, the year the business opened. Obvious factual slips. And house style throughout.
The deliverable that matters most is the style sheet — a document listing every decision made about your book. Most authors barely look at it, and it is the single most useful artefact of the whole process, especially if you plan a second book.
Which one does your draft need?
Read three pages aloud.
If you find yourself stumbling, or hearing padding, or noticing that every sentence lands the same way — that is a line edit.
If it reads fluently but you keep spotting inconsistencies, or you know your grammar is unreliable, or you have written a book across four years and three conventions — that is a copy-edit.
Most self-published books need a copy-edit. Books written quickly, or dictated, or drafted across a long period, often want a light line pass first. Doing both on a full-length book costs £1,600–£3,600, and for many books that is more than the return justifies.
Dictated and spoken drafts are a special case
Text that started as speech has different problems from text that started as typing, and generic editing advice misses them.
Speech repeats deliberately — you say a thing three ways so the listener catches it, which is correct in a room and exhausting on a page. It uses filler as thinking time. It circles back. It carries verbal tics that were invisible aloud and glaring in print. And it has almost no paragraph structure, because speech does not have paragraphs.
The fix is not a full line edit. It is a narrower job: remove filler and repetition, impose paragraphing, keep every actual word choice. That is a different pass, and doing a general line edit instead tends to erase the spoken voice — which for memoir is usually the best thing the draft has.
What Your Book Pro does here
Your Book Pro is a British book-writing platform. You bring a book — an idea, a folder of notes, half a draft, or a finished manuscript written somewhere else — and it gives you the editorial process a publisher would run: a plan, structured feedback, a simulated beta read, a line edit, a proofread, a cover, a blurb and a print-ready file. You can type it, upload it or speak it. The tools sit in one place and work on the same manuscript, so the feedback compounds instead of arriving as twelve disconnected opinions.
Light Edit is deliberately the narrow job described above: it removes filler and repetition without touching your wording. Not a line editor reshaping sentences for effect — a first pass that takes out what speech and fast drafting leave behind, and leaves your choices alone. That restraint is the design decision, and it is why the pass is safe to run before you have decided anything else.
The Book Dictionary is your style sheet, held for you: every name, place, term and spelling convention your book uses, applied consistently across the whole manuscript rather than remembered chapter by chapter. It is what a copy-editor would build for you at £800–£1,600, and it carries into your next book.
The Editing Suite is where these run in order alongside the rest, on one manuscript.
What a human line editor still does better: reshaping a sentence for rhythm and effect is a craft judgement, and a good one will make your prose better than you can. If the writing itself is the point of your book — literary fiction, essays, anything read for the sentences — that is money well spent.
Clean up a chapter
Upload a manuscript written anywhere
Email me the chapterQuestions people ask
- Do I need both a line edit and a copy-edit?
- Usually not. Most books need one. Trade publishing does both; self-published books more often do a copy-edit alone, or a light line pass followed by a copy-edit if the budget stretches.
- How much does copy-editing cost in the UK?
- £800–£1,600 for a full-length book, based on CIEP suggested minimum rates and the state of the manuscript. Rough drafts cost more because they take longer.
- What is a style sheet?
- The document a copy-editor builds recording every decision about your book — spellings, names, hyphenation, numbers, capitalisation. Ask for it, keep it, and reuse it on your next book.
- Can I copy-edit my own book?
- You can improve it substantially, especially with a style sheet and mechanical consistency checks. You will not achieve what a professional does, because consistency across 90,000 words is a memory problem, not a skill problem.
- Should I edit a dictated draft differently?
- Yes. Speech leaves filler, repetition and no paragraphing. Fix those first, as a separate narrow pass, before any general editing — otherwise the spoken voice gets edited out along with the noise.