1
Standardize “email” versus “e-mail” according to the project style sheet.
11 Copyediting Examples
Use these examples to study structure, specificity, tone, and variation. They are demonstrations—not claims about a real person or organization unless the example itself makes that explicit.
Before you copy
What to notice in the examples
A strong copyedit applies rules consistently, distinguishes definite errors from style choices, maintains a style sheet, queries ambiguous or factual issues rather than guessing, and avoids unnecessary rewriting that belongs to line or developmental editing.
- Mechanical correctness in grammar, punctuation, spelling, and usage.
- Consistency in capitalization, hyphenation, numbers, dates, terminology, and names.
- Internal continuity and obvious factual checks within the agreed scope.
- Style sheet documenting decisions and author-specific exceptions.
2
Correct a dangling modifier that accidentally assigns an action to the wrong noun.
3
Flag a character whose age changes from 34 to 36 within the same story year.
4
Query whether “million” should be “billion” when the figure conflicts with a table elsewhere.
5
Standardize heading capitalization according to the chosen style.
6
Preserve intentional fragments in dialogue while correcting accidental fragments in exposition.
7
Check whether compound modifiers are hyphenated consistently before nouns.
8
Record whether the manuscript uses serial commas so later chapters follow the same convention.
9
A copyeditor may standardize “website” across a manuscript, flag one disputed statistic for author verification, and leave a stylistic fragment untouched because it is deliberate dialogue.
10
Copyediting a report includes checking headings, abbreviations, date formats, cross-references, tables, and terminology—not only sentence grammar.
11
The manuscript consistently capitalizes 'Board' in some sections and 'board' in others; choose the house style and apply it throughout.
Keep the underlying decision or pattern, then replace the subject, evidence, relationship, constraints, and tone with details that belong to your situation. If your final line still works after swapping only one noun, it may be too close to the example.