Over 20 years of proofreading and copy editing, I’ve come to accept that most people outside the publishing industry don’t really know the difference between the two disciplines. Usually, when people don’t grasp the differences between two things, it turns out it’s because there really aren’t that many differences. I think this is the case here.

Proofreading and copy editing are both essential publishing tasks, and they’re both working towards the same end – better quality copy – and they overlap in many ways. So why do they have two different titles? Here’s an explanation.

Continue reading →