Focuses on mechanical issues. This includes reading for overall clarity and sense on behalf of the target audience, with particular attention to the following
- Correcting spelling, grammar, punctuation, syntax, and word usage, with special attention paid to common and preferred usage for non-native English authors
- Flagging inappropriate word choice, confusing sentences, redundancies
- Checking for and imposing a consistent style and format (e.g., treatment of capitalization punctuation, numbers, hyphenation, use of abbreviations, etc.) such as APA, ASA, Chicago styles
- Standardizing the overall manuscript, which includes alerting you if there are any inconsistencies in the manuscript, such as faulty time lines, and verifying that character names and location references, as well as terminology, are presented and spelled consistently
- Some fact checking, if and as agreed upon by Author and Editor
- Noting permissions needed to publish copyrighted material
- Cross-checking references, art, figures, tables, equations, and other features for consistency with their mentions in the text
- Preparing a style sheet that documents style and formatting decisions
- Incorporating responses to queries and suggestions and creating a new draft of the document
