As a copy-editor or proofreader you'll ensure that material is clear, consistent, complete and credible, and that text is well written, grammatically correct and accessible. You'll take the initial material, or the copy, and make it ready for publication.

Responsibilities

Activities depend on experience and whether you work in-house or freelance. They may include:

• correcting spelling mistakes and grammatical errors
• sub-editing text written by a number of authors to ensure consistent house style
• working with IT-based publishing systems and databases, as well as via the internet or from paper manuscripts
• liaising regularly with authors and publishers by phone and email
• checking that authors have provided all the required materials and paperwork
• resolving queries directly with the author, such as style and text inconsistencies
• coding manuscripts for design features, such as hierarchy of headings, to instruct the production team
• creating artwork briefs to detail the content of illustrations
• ensuring that illustrations are correctly captioned and referred to in the text
• producing or working to a style checklist to ensure consistency in hyphenation, capitalisation, formatting of references, etc
• maintaining awareness of new words or phrases coming into popular usage with a view to ensuring they're appropriate for the readership
• discussing and resolving any potentially libellous sections with the commissioning editor and author
• retrieving articles from archives and rearranging within publications
• preparing preliminary pages for the title, contents and preface of a publication
• overseeing the work of indexers, typesetters and designers
• typesetting and designing layout (increasingly for freelancers)
• ensuring that publications are prepared on budget and to schedule
• managing marketing and business activities (for those who are self-employed).