01
Rhythm and movement
Line editing hears how a paragraph moves: where it gathers force, where it pauses, and where a sentence has more weight than it needs.
02 · Line editing
Line editing: the sentence-level pass that makes the argument land
Line editing works paragraph by paragraph. It attends to rhythm, clarity, emphasis, and the relation between a writer’s voice and the reader’s understanding. Copy editing, the technical consistency pass over grammar, usage, names, references and citations, is part of line-by-line editing; read more about the copy-editing work on its dedicated page Copy editing in detail →.
02
Clarity without flattening
The aim is not to make every voice efficient or uniform. It is to remove the fog that keeps a good thought from reaching its reader.
03
Emphasis and proportion
A sentence-level pass helps the important parts feel important, so the book’s attention is not spent evenly on everything.
04
The author’s voice
Your voice is not an ornament to preserve after the work is done. It is part of the work, and the edit should make it more legible.