Substantive Editing

• Early stage of manuscript development

• Focuses on overall impact on the reader made via the structure and organization. 

• Developmental editors focus on big picture issues with how the argument (or story) unfolds, ensuring the narration is convincing.

• Line editors, with some overlap with copyeditors, pay close attention to tone and clarity on paragraph and sentence level, improving voice and pacing consistency.

• Line editors correct basic and obvious grammar errors, although their focus is on word choices, writer's tone, abstraction of ideas, and stylistic devices used.

Mechanical Editing

• Final stage before publication

• Focuses on making the text error-free and visually appealing in publication format.

• Copyeditors focus on spelling, punctuation, capitalization, grammar, word usage, conformance to a specific publication style etc. 

• Proofreaders focus on visual aspects such as fonts, formatting, heading styles, typeface, and layout of visual elements such as images.​

• Other services provided by editors include glossary creation, indexing, captioning, cross-referencing of footnotes etc.