Structural Editing: This involves providing feedback on a document’s content. This may include suggesting changes to the order in which paragraphs, chapters or sections appear, or making suggestions as to what might be added or deleted to improve the document.
Stylistic Editing: This involves clarifying meaning, setting an appropriate tone, getting rid of jargon, eliminating bias, simplifying overly-complicated passages, smoothing language and correcting internal inconsistencies, all while maintaining the author’s “voice”.
Copy Editing: This involves ensuring consistency and correcting errors in spelling, usage, grammar, punctuation and style.
Proofreading: This involves doing a final review of a document before it is published or printed to catch any mistakes missed during editing or introduced during page layout.
More information on editing can be found at the Editors’ Association of Canada website at www.editors.ca/hire/definitions.html.
Writing and Research Services: Writing (articles, website content, rewriting, etc.) and research services are available upon request. Writing rates depend upon several factors, including the complexity of the document and the amount of original material provided by the client.
Introductory Editing Rates:
(first-time clients only)
$25 Canadian per hour
Regular Editing Rates:
$40 Canadian per hour
Prices do not include HST
Q: How much would Zen Editorial charge to edit my document?
A: That depends on how long the document is, what sort of editing is required or requested (see “Editing Services”, above) and how “clean” the document already is. Editors edit an average of 4 to 10 pages per hour.You can come up with a rough estimate for your job by finding out how many pages there are in your document based on the industry-standard formula of 250 words per page. Use the word count feature in your word processing software. Microsoft Word’s word count feature is inside the Review tab. Once you have the word count for your document, divide by 250 to find the number of pages. Divide the number of pages by 5 (an average pages-per-hour editing pace for a fairly “clean” document) for an estimate of the number of editing hours required. Multiply by $40 per hour to determine the estimated fee (or $25 at the introductory price). If your document requires more than one revision, the fee will be higher. Zen Editorial will provide you with a written estimate before an editing agreement is drawn up.
Q: Please give me an example.
A: Let’s use a manuscript with a word count of 60,000 as an example. Divide 60,000 words by 250 words per page to get 240 pages. Divide by 5 pages per hour (average editing pace for a simple job). It would take 48 hours to edit this manuscript once, multiplied by $40 per hour, for an estimated fee of $1,920 (or $1,200 at the introductory price).
We accept payments by cash, cheque and PayPal.
Please see Terms & Conditions page (in the Editing Services & Estimates menu) for more detail.
