5,000 words per day? 10,000? 30,000? Copyediting and proofreading speeds vary wildly between projects and editors. In this post, seven advanced editors share how different projects and circumstances affect their editing speeds.
Copyeditors and proofreaders often talk about how many words they can edit per hour. If, like many editors, you ultimately think in terms of how much you want to earn per hour, this is vital data to have. Once you know your average hourly editing speed, you can start to work out how much to charge your client.
However, you may find that when it comes to scheduling when you will actually do the work, daily numbers work better. As we’ll see from the contributions below, calculating your daily word count is not a simple matter of multiplying hourly throughput by number of hours.
From project complexity to cognitive load and from level of experience to mental wellbeing, it’s important to consider the broader picture when you need to forecast a realistic copyediting or proofreading volume per day.
The Proof Pros were asked...
How many words can you edit in a day?
Ayesha Chari: ‘How many words I can edit has a different answer from how many words I can edit well’
How many ants are marching in line? How big is a slice of cake? How many spinach seeds planted will germinate? All real questions my child has asked me this year.
Last week I edited six chapters of a scholarly book of over 120,000 words. Each chapter of varying length and complexity. I also edited three journal articles. My time tracker tells me I gobbled 22,036 words of the book project and 28,711 words of the latter. An erratic mix of copyediting and substantive line editing. I worked in and on my business on all seven days of the week, but billable (editing) hours on five days of the week. That’s approximately 10,000 words edited each day. In a past in-house editor role, I’ve edited three times that many words in a day on average, six or seven days a week, over two years. Unsustainable. Some weeks ago, my tracker alerted me to reduced screen time. I had edited 5,814 words that week. Differently unsustainable.
I’m an independent academic and scholarly editor and publishing consultant, working full time, privileged to not be the sole earner in my household. How many words I can edit has a different answer from how many words I can edit well, with my whole physical, emotional and mental being in sync on any given day. The number also fluctuates depending on, among other things, priorities of client or self-imposed deadlines, childcare needs, creative inspiration, income flow requirements or anticipated feast-and-famine work phases, and if any crisis – personal or professional – needs attention. Oh, and the weather (I live in England)!
So, no surprises then when I say, like most things in editing, the answer to this too – as with the answer to many of my child’s life questions – is ‘it depends’!
Ayesha Chari (she/they) is an academic and scholarly editor and publishing consultant, who juggles copyediting, line editing and substantive editing with parenting, walking and doodling, among other exciting things. Discovering good references in books brings Ayesha joy.
Lisa de Caux: ‘This may vary from the trickiest of tricky books on a tricky day to a beautifully flowing edit on a marvellous day’
This really is an ‘it depends’ question.
Context is needed.
When I edit, I run through my editing checklist and start with the nuts and bolts. Macros and professional editing software and looking for easy wins like changing straight quote marks to curly quote marks.
I’m not looking at the number of words I’ve covered.
Then I start the close read. I read every word and punctuation mark line by line.
I have saved myself close reading time with the hours spent marking up the nuts and bolts.
Sometimes, there’s a phrase that comes up regularly and needs to be clarified with the author. Can I carry on editing while I wait for a reply? It depends on the nature of the question.
For me, a helpful question would be: how many hours a day do you have available for editing?
The answer is four to five hours.
Again ‘it depends’.
Editing is all about focus.
Do I have to break away from the close read for an author’s question? Have I discovered an unexpected global change that needs to be dealt with before I edit further?
Has something happened that’s thrown me off my editing game? Maybe I’ve caught a nasty virus… (Touch wood I won’t!)
‘It depends’ is why I quote a bespoke flat fee for every edit, after I’ve done some information gathering.
The author will know where they stand! And I will too!
I’m sure you’d like a number though. This may vary from 4,000 to 12,000 words a day, from the trickiest of tricky books on a tricky day to a beautifully flowing edit on a marvellous day.
Lisa de Caux is an editor and proofreader, specialising in business books and fiction. She spent many years as a chartered accountant before retraining as an editor and proofreader. Now she gets to embrace her degree in English Lit! She offers copyediting, proofreading and proof-editing for fiction and non-fiction, and business mentoring for editorial businesses.
Member of: CIEP (Advanced Professional)
Debbie Emmitt: ‘There is no single response that makes sense without context’
This is a tricky question to answer, as there is no single response that makes sense without context. There are many factors that come into play when calculating word rate, such as:
- Level of editing (developmental, line, copy, proofreading)
- Type of content (e.g. contemporary, literary or historical fiction; nonfiction with lots of references, tables and technical data; business copy)
- Editor’s state of mind and surroundings (e.g. tired or wide awake, kids at home or not)
- Author’s knowledge of writing craft
- Whether the author is writing in their first language
- Available hours a day for editing (alongside admin, business-management tasks, life commitments, etc)
Even if I have no other demands on my time for a particular day, the level of concentration required for editing dictates I can edit for a maximum of 4–5 hours per day, and no longer than 45–60 minutes at a time.
With all this in mind, I can now answer the question! As a very basic guide, my words-per-hour rates are approximately:
- Line and copyediting combo: 1,000–1,500 words
- Line editing: 1,200–1,700 words
- Copyediting: 2,000–2,500 words
- Proofreading: 2,300–2,800 words
Multiply these by four or five to get my maximum per day. This is the ideal and rarely matches reality!
Debbie Emmitt is a friendly, experienced editor and proofreader, specialising in books set in France, mysteries and thrillers, historical fiction, memoirs/biographies and web content. She's also the author of the Improve Your Website books for editors and authors, and Tricky Quickies. She's putting the finishing touches to her debut novel, a mystery set in the south of France.
Amanda George: ‘A new day means a fresh brain for a different brief’
It’s important to distinguish between how many words we can edit and how many words we should edit in a day. But first, some context.
When a client asks how long a job will take, we need to know the word count. But we also need to know what they want (editing, proofreading, formatting, word reduction, plain English, humanising AI output, cross-checking references). And we need to see the file. Has our client used AI? If so, to what extent? Have they written it in a hurry or spent hours polishing it? Is English their first language? Is it a Word file or a PDF? The answers to all of these questions determine how many words we can edit in an hour for that client, on that job.
But this is all very abstract, so let’s look at an example.
I edited two academic papers for a regular client this week. Both were 10,000 words, both were Word files, and both required formatting plus reference checking, and the usual editing. Each one took me around five hours, which means an average of 2,000 words edited per hour. Another important factor is that I have worked with this client for over a decade, so it’s possible I can work more quickly for him than I can for a new client.
So, in answer to Hazel’s question, I gave myself a day to edit each file, which means I edited 10,000 words per day. And while I could have fitted in another couple of hours, which would take us to around 14,000 words, I didn’t.
Why? Because fatigue is counterproductive, because we all have other pulls on our time, and because, in an ideal world, every file should have its day. By that, I mean that my brain gets very involved in a particular style guide, the subject matter, and the writing style. And a new day means a fresh brain for a different brief. Of course, a file can only have its day if it’s relatively short, so someone who regularly edits books will give a completely different answer. Let’s see!
Amanda George supports her clients with freelance proofreading, copy-editing, and plain English. Having produced publications for a Cambridge college for 10 years, she now edits papers, case studies, reports, and books for academics, schools, universities, businesses, and charities. Amanda loves helping clients whose first language is not English.
Member of: CIEP (Advanced Professional)
Andrew Hodges: ‘Tracking your hours is invaluable for figuring out your editing speed and your bottom line’
Let’s start with casual reading. I consider myself a slow reader, but I just took this test and came in quite fast at 411 words per minute with 73% comprehension. Admittedly the task made me read faster than usual, so I expect I would come in at around 300 words per minute. Longer if the material was complicated. With breaks and thinking time, that’s still solidly over 10,000 words per hour.
I don’t edit anywhere near that fast.
Now, a comfortable day of editing is five hours, and a strained day is six hours. Let’s assume a comfortable day.
For fiction manuscript critiques, I budget for 10,000 words an hour of casual reading, then two hours for typing up my notes ready for the coaching call. So I could technically do 50,000 words of casual reading. However, I’m usually far less efficient than this because I can’t sustain my concentration and absorb the best part of a book in a day. So I like to just do an hour or two of this a day.
For academic developmental editing (just the manuscript commenting phase), I usually budget for max. 2,500 words an hour, which includes ‘preflight’, setting things up, thinking about the comments, etc. So up to 15,000 words a day here.
Academic line editing can vary a lot, but it’s usually around 1,200 words an hour (which includes two passes), so around 7,000 words a day.
Fiction copyediting for publishers is significantly faster. While just a single pass, it can be anything from 2,300 to 3,300 words an hour for copyediting. So anything from 12,000 to 15,000 words on a comfortable day, but the rates offered are usually low so I end up working longer hours and therefore don’t take many of these jobs on. Publishers – raise your freelance rates if you want decent editing!
Oh, and be sure to track your hours. I didn’t for the first few years, but it’s invaluable for figuring out your editing speed and your bottom line.
Dr Andrew Hodges (he/they) is a developmental editor and copyeditor of fiction and cultural anthropology. They run workshops across Europe on worldbuilding, POV, and crafting culture and setting in stories. Andy loves working on fantasy-fiction novels and projects with a strong LGBTQ+ or social justice element to them. You can check out their newsletter, worldbuilding webinar and podcast.
Hazel Bird: ‘The cognitive demands of some clients’ projects mean that I’m delighted if I hit 5,000 words per day’
Many years ago I went through a phase of editing about 30,000 words per day. But it was crippling.
I did it to help a client out with a ‘challenging’ schedule (a red-flag word if I ever saw one!) and because I was focused on saving to buy a house. Many of us will have times in our careers when we’re either enticed or feel compelled to attempt such ridiculous targets. But it’s important to have our eyes wide open to the potential effects on our health and wellbeing. Working in this way required absurdly long days and was utterly unsustainable for more than a few weeks. It also required an exceptionally controlled and efficient workflow (a lot of which went into my course Handling Large Editorial Projects – although I absolutely do not recommend you use the knowledge from my course in the way I did!).
Nowadays, once I’m up to speed with a project, I may be able to hit 10,000–15,000 words per day if it’s straightforward. But that doesn’t mean I can edit a 45,000-word project in three days. I need time for all the other stuff: digesting the brief, querying the client on the approach, editing the references, running clean-ups and consistency checks, mulling over tricky issues, taking in authors’ replies…
At the other end of the scale, the cognitive demands of some clients’ projects mean that I’m delighted if I hit 5,000 words per day. These projects require careful consideration, an iterative approach (where I go over each section multiple times), and sometimes heavy fact-checking and research to ensure accuracy.
All this is to say: there is no single number of words any editor ‘should’ aim for, and we must beware of beating ourselves up if another editor gets through more words in a day. Before you even begin to compare your numbers to someone else’s, consider different life and wellbeing goals and priorities, the level of editing required, and whether the editor is giving you an average for the whole project or telling you their maximum speed with holistic tasks and querying discounted.
Hazel Bird has been a freelance editor and editorial project manager since 2009. An artsy spreadsheetoholic, she specializes in charity content, business content and complex projects. She publishes The Edit Better Blog and offers courses and tools designed to help you build beyond your core editorial skills. Hazel coordinates the Proof Pros and hosts their contributions on The Edit Better Blog.
Katie Chambers: ‘Speed is not indicative of quality at all’
I’m an unusually fast editor. It doesn’t make me better or worse; it just is. So my average is not the norm. Like most editors, I can’t edit more than five hours a day and given the time needed for other aspects of my business (I do a lot), it’s often more like three or four.
I edit light nonfiction (self-help, how-to, business, etc.) and fiction. I don't edit dense nonfiction or academic text, which would definitely take me longer.
My most popular service is my combined developmental editing and copyediting package (my copyediting includes line editing). So I just configured based on that. If I’m doing developmental only or copyediting only, then I can do even more words in a day than what I state below.
The number of words I can edit per hour depends on the depth of editing required. But, looking at my last year’s data: I edited anywhere from 1,900 words per hour to 3,500 words per hour, averaging 2,588 for the year.
This would mean on a three-hour edit day, I edited anywhere between 5,700 and 10,500 words. A four-hour edit day would be 7,600 to 14,000. As I said, this is definitely not the norm. I type, read, and process quickly. I’m also tech savvy and use macros and other tools to assist with the editing to take care of lower-level issues so my brain is free to focus on other concepts.
Speed, however, is not indicative of quality at all. Varying levels of quality exist at slower and faster speeds. I used to be very hesitant about sharing my editing speeds because I could get accused of being less thorough and more sloppy, but after meeting other editors, some well respected in our community, who also edit at unusually fast speeds, I was confident enough to state it. It is what it is. I’ve seen slower editors and faster editors apologize for their speed, and there is no need. The quality of the work is ultimately what matters.
Katie Chambers, owner of Beacon Point LLC, is a nonfiction and fiction developmental editor and copy editor for independent authors and online teacher. After discovering a love for the administrative side, she created systems and processes to help her streamline her business, which she now teaches to other editors.
The Proof Pros are all independent contributors. Each person’s words are their own and are not necessarily endorsed by the other contributors.
Useful nuts and bolts information here. Thank you all for sharing your experiences!