Copyediting Introduction: Why Is It Important?
Most of you might be familiar with copywriting, but not with copyediting. So, what’s copyediting?
Copyediting is a process of editing, correcting and evaluating all type of contents before publishing. Copyeditors are the quality gatekeepers of the publishing world and may well hold the keys to your success. And this is why contents have to be edited first :
- Ensure the copywriting aligns with the initial objective.
- To publish the best quality content.
- Chance to improve the writing, be it the angle of writing, word of choices and sentence structure to make it easy to understand.
- Ensure the script meets the standards and maintains brand image and tone of voice.
Imagine you have spent a lot of money and a massive media placement only to realize a lot later that your ad has a typo in it. And not just a simple typo but one that could lead to a different interpretations.
The example above is most likely to happen, well, either they’re not copyediting the content or the copyeditors rushed in editing and missed a certain area.
Copyediting isn’t limited to edit typos, but has to make sure that the content’s substance is relevant to the audience’s social value. We don’t want to offend a blameless party, right? So as to be sure the content is relevant to the audience’s social value, copyeditors must first conduct research on the social and economic conditions of the audiences.
Therefore, copyediting the most crucial part in the creative stages. Copyediting is one of the internal finalization step to ensure that the content we’re about to publish has zero mistakes and error-free.
Copyediting Vs Proofreading
Now you know what is copyediting, so what’s the difference between copyediting and proofreading? Hierarchically in the creative stages, after copywriting, the next step is copyediting and the final step is proofreading. So proofreading is the finalization of the text.
The key differences between copyediting and proofreading is, copyediting involves a more in-depth review of the text, while proofreading is a more focused and superficial review of the text.
Conclusion
Copyediting is the most crucial part in the creative stages, its goal is to improve overall quality of the context, ensure the copywriting aligns with the brand’s image and tone of voice and the content substance’s relevant to the social value of the audiences.
To your further reading, copyediting and proofreading has slightly differences while copyediting focused on the text’s substance, while proofreading focused on the technical writing of the text.
Content is the reason search began in the first place.
— Lee Odden
Let’s connect on Linkedin and grow together.
Efrina Hidayati
Digital Marketing Enthusiast | Copywriting
References:
[1] Veronica Gabriella. “Copyediting Strategy”. E-learning of MySkill. Accessed August 21th, 2023.
[2] What Is Copyediting? A Complete Guide. Online at https://jerichowriters.com/what-is-copyediting-complete-guide/. Accessed August 21th, 2023.
[3] Copy Editing Vs Proofreading: Understanding The Differences And Benefits. Online at https://bubblecow.com/blog/copy-editing-v-proofreading. Accessed August 21th, 2023.