Last Look

It’s the final step before your book is published. You’ve already done multiple drafts, beta reading, and copyediting. The layout and design are complete, with all parts (including images, sidebars, footnotes, etc.) in their places. Basically, your project should be in its final form—exactly what it will look like for your audience.

 

Here’s what I’ll be checking:

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• Pagination. Are the pages numbered? Are the numbers in the same location on each page? Are they hidden where they’re supposed to be?

• Headers and titles. Do the headers and titles match the content? Are they spelled correctly? Do they all have the same style?

• Layout. Are the margins consistent? Is the text properly justified on the right side? Are paragraphs indented (or not indented where they shouldn’t be)?

• Design. Is the font consistent? Are all the chapter titles, headers, etc. the same font style and size? Are the same marks or symbols used consistently to indicate scene breaks?

• Images. Are the correct images used? Are they in the proper positions? Are they the correct size and quality?

• Breaks. Are there too many end-of-line hyphens in a row? Are there any sentences that continue to the next page, even though they’re the last sentence of a paragraph or scene?

• Spacing. Are the words spaced too far apart or too close together? Does the white space between words create lines down the page that would draw the eye? Is there enough space between lines?

• Mechanical errors. Are there any mistakes in punctuation, spelling, homonyms, grammar, or syntax that were missed by earlier editing passes?

 

(You may have seen other editors call this service “proofreading.”)

 

*Note: The Last Look does not include smoothing out awkward sentences, making writing more concise, clarifying confusing passages, or checking the consistency of word usage or character details. These types of edits fall under my Detail Debug service.