Line-editing falls under the umbrella of technical edits. It is a higher level of technical edit that focuses on improving the quality of the prose. Whereas developmental-editing looks at improving the whole story, line-editing focuses on the paragraph and sentence level when searching for improvement opportunities. An average line editor will look for:
- Clarity weaknesses. Reducing ambiguity in a sentence to make it easier to understand.
- Fluency weaknesses. Awkward sentence structure or word choice can ruin the reader experience and grind everything to a halt.
- Flow weaknesses. This can be sentence-level or apply to whole paragraphs. It usually takes the form of odd or weak pacing; an editor may attempt a rewrite or propose deleting sentences wholesale.
Clarity, fluency, and flow are thrown around quite often. They can be distilled into two ideas: they seek to make the prose easier to understand and easier to read. That may sound like the same thing, but they are quite different.
Making something easier to read might involve cutting out filler or bloat, or adjusting the arrangement of words. Easier to understand might mean tightening up a metaphor, clarifying dialogue, or making a description pop.
The short version
- Line editing works at the sentence and paragraph level, making the prose clearer and easier to read.
- It sits between developmental editing, which reshapes the story, and copy editing, which fixes what is wrong.
- A good line editor targets run-on sentences, filler, repetition, and clumsy phrasing that slows a reader down.
- It sharpens how the writing reads without rewriting your work wholesale.
What a good line editor looks for
A good line editor goes a level deeper and retains some recollection of the previous paragraphs. They will look for:
- Run-on sentences or comma-splice issues.
- Filler or bloated prose.
- Repeated words. This can include reusing adjectives, starting two or three sentences the same way, or overusing pronouns across a few sentences.
- Passive sentence structure or wording.
- Loose dialogue and/or action beats. This delves slightly into rewrites, and the scope depends greatly on the quality and cost of the editor.
- Adverb and/or conjunction overuse. Not to say these are wrong, but overusing them can be grating on the reader.
What a bad line editor might do
- Miss entire paragraphs.
- Show a visible decline of quality in later pages.
- Ignore or introduce repetitive sentence or paragraph structure. This issue is particularly insidious because it’s easy to miss if the client or the editor isn’t paying close attention. Ctrl+F searching for repeated words is easy, but you have to actually read the prose to notice a repeated sentence structure.
Now that you have a good grasp on line-editing, consider checking out our editing types post, where we go over the steps of editing under a simplified framework.
Common questions
Line editing vs copy editing?
Line editing improves the quality of the prose; copy editing corrects it. A line editor reworks awkward phrasing, tightens bloated sentences, and smooths flow at the sentence and paragraph level. A copy editor comes afterward to fix grammar, punctuation, and continuity. One asks whether the writing reads well; the other asks whether it is correct.
Do I need line editing?
If readers tell you the story is good but the writing feels clunky, dense, or slow in places, that is line editing territory. It is the pass for prose that is technically fine but not yet smooth. A first-time author with a strong story and rough sentences usually gains the most from it.
Line editing vs developmental editing?
Developmental editing works on the whole story: plot, characters, pacing, and structure. Line editing works far closer in, on how each sentence and paragraph is written. Developmental editing decides whether a scene belongs; line editing makes the scene read well once it stays.
How much does line editing cost?
Line editing starts in our Basic tier at $11 per 1,000 words, alongside copy editing, and is also included in our Premium tier at no additional cost. See our editing services page for the full comparison.
What does a line editor look for?
A strong line editor reads for the reader’s experience: run-on and comma-spliced sentences, filler that adds nothing, repeated words and repeated sentence structures, passive constructions, and dialogue or action that lands flat. The subtler catch is repeated structure, which is easy to miss unless someone is genuinely reading the prose rather than scanning it.