Editing

We Have a Collaborative Approach

At DNB Publishing, Ltd., we like to collaborate with our authors. Beyond standardizing punctuation or grammar, we work with the author to tailor their work to the targeted audience. If you want a piece to sound more educated, using complex synonyms, we can help. Want children’s dialogue to sound like kids, we do that also. And we don’t just make those changes arbitrarily, we ask you questions, have conversations with you, and make suggestions. In other words, DNB collaborates with you because ultimately, it’s up to the author to determine their own voice. We just perfect yours.

DNB Publishing, Ltd. provides:

• Copyediting (or Line Editing): Where grammar, punctuation, and sentence structure is the focus. Also, are there too many exclamation marks when a comma would do. Are other languages, when used in an English manuscript, punctuated correctly according to the foreign language? And are you confusing ‘their’ with ‘there’, ‘your’ with ‘you’re’, or ‘to’ with ‘too’?
• Content (or Development) Editing: Where how a manuscript or story works overall is dissected. We verify details. Is the hero’s eyes brown on page 23 but blue on page 76? Should this scene come before that one? Does the novel or story make sense? Is the ending cliché? We help you answer these questions.
• Fact Checking: Making sure that what the author states is true is so important in this day and age. (Was that really the woman’s name or did this battle happen in that year?) We verify through multiple sources, always trying to find the original facts. We collaborate by asking you to show us your documentation as well.

Although we concentrate on using The Chicago Manual of Style, Seventeenth Edition (CMOS) for fic- tion and the Associated Press Stylebook for nonfiction, we can also edit to APA, Strunk & White, AMA, ASA, and computer industry stylebooks. We also can align to stylebooks for companies, universities, and other entities where these diverge from the standards.

Just For Fun: In you want to get in an hour-long discussion with our CEO, tell her you don’t like the Oxford (serial) comma. She loves the Oxford comma, but she will forego it if you choose another style guide.