|
Why editing?
Q. Why should I spend the money
and time on
editing services?
A. How you represent your valuable work in
the written
form influences how your clients or readers will judge your overall performance.
Editing is a small, but key, investment in the
successful outcome of your organisation's, or company's, work. Editing isn’t just ‘window dressing’, although
it's often seen in that light.
Q. How will my clients or readers react to errors or inconsistencies in my
written work?
A. Perfection is expected of writing and the visual presentation
of texts as never before.
A poorly edited and presented text has a powerfully negative
impact on readers, who form immediate and lasting impressions of an organisation or author based on even the smallest text
errors.
From the smallest email to the most in-depth paper published to an international readership, poor
editing suggests that your organisation is ‘careless’ and ‘unprofessional’ in how it presents itself.
This can have a serious impact if you aim to be locally or globally competitive or to reach an international readership
that communicates in the same language.
Pricing
Q: How do I pay?
A: You can make a direct bank transfer to our account.
WorldPay™ (which allows you to send payments electronically) will soon
be available at
Southern Cross Editing.
Q. Do I need to make a deposit?
A. Depending on
the type and size of the work and also on the client, we may ask for a
non-refundable deposit of 30% of the
overall fee before work begins.
Q. Do you charge by the word or by the page?
A. We charge just by
the hour. This more properly reflects the varying amounts of time and effort required to professionally edit
any given amount of text.
For this reason also, our editors keep timesheets, available
on request to clients, so that it is
clear exactly what work has been done.
Q. Other companies offer quicker and cheaper copyediting and proofreading services. Do you match your prices with other
companies?
A. We are happy to negotiate prices, but we do not price match. A budget service
that edits or proofreads a complex document in a few hours often delivers mediocre results. Editing and proofreading are high
precision skills and time intensive by nature.
If you wish to entrust your work to professionals who provide
excellent service at reasonable prices, we look forward to hearing from you. If you prefer the quickest and cheapest service
available, you will find many other basic services to fulfill your needs.
Style and Content
Q.
What is the difference between content and copy editing?
A. Content editing (also known as 'substantive
editing') is a mixture of writing, rewriting, proofreading and checking facts, inconsistencies, thematic development and other components
of written documents.
Content editing is part of the writing process of any written text. It is also about sustaining person-to-person
professional relations and excellent communication, since editors and their clients often liaise quite closely.
Copy editing is proofreading and checking
facts in written documents, usually just before they submitted for publication or release.
Copy
editing – and proofreading in particular – is popularly considered as ‘just’ polishing the text, and
requiring less skill than content editing. This is untrue. But the myth is upheld by innumerable second-rate practitioners.
Like
content editing, copyediting is an extremely high precision, professional craft. It requires meticulous attention to detail and sustained focus
on lengthy, complex texts.
A poorly copy-edited text has a powerfully negative impact on readers, who form immediate and lasting impressions
of an organisation or author based on small text errors.
Q. Which editing styles and standards do you follow?
A. We follow the same styles and standards as our clients. For instance, if a client
uses American English spelling and is submitting their work to a journal which has its own 'house style', we ensure that the
style and format of the manuscript consistently adhere to those rules. For this reason, clients are asked to identify the
name of the journal they are submitting their work to, so that the journal's house style can be checked before editing begins.
Other
Q. Do you guarantee that
my work will be published?
A. We bring your work to a publishable standard. Ultimately,
however, only the publisher – with their own criteria – can decide whether your manuscript will be published.
We work independently and do not collaborate professionally with publishing companies to have manuscripts published. What
we do guarantee is that our team of editing professionals will provide you a high
quality standard of editing and advice to assist you in achieving your goal of publication.
|
