What Is the Difference Between Line Editing and Copyediting?
Line editing (LE) and copyediting (CE) are related skills, as they both focus on the sentence level. Obviously there is significant overlap between the two skills.
Basic Definition of Copyediting
But copyediting is about ensuring consistency across a manuscript, correcting egregious errors, making sure the manuscript conforms to a specific style guide, and otherwise smoothing the prose so the reader doesn’t experience any sentence-level bumps as they read.
Basic Definition of Line Editing
Line editing, on the other hand, is specifically about creating more engagement at the sentence level. Though a line editor will fix a typo when they come across it, that is not their main purpose. They may solve developmental problems through judicious sentence-level edits (“I’ve deleted some info-dumping that was slowing the pacing in this chapter”), they may trim overwritten prose so that it is more emotionally resonant to the reader, and they may sharpen dialogue to make characters more engaging.
As you can see, both are sentence-level efforts but with different intentions and purposes.
