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A Sample of Level 1 – Basic COPY EDITING for Fiction
He knew she was always on at the park on Fridays.
He knew she loved the Yankees and her baseball bat.
He knew they were friends.
And after that short list, he could honestly admit that he knew nothing about her. How could he even call
himself her friend with such a pathetic display?
There was also a touch of guilt dashed in with his conflicted emotions. He’d always assumed that Skyla went
home after the three of them left the park, or that her parents picked her up, but he didn’t know that for certain. He
pictured Skyla walking home by herself in on the dark streets of Grand Junction. She would be left completely
exposed to the vilest of creatures – strangers.
After escorting Ruby back to their apartment building, Danny told her that he had forgotten “‘something”’ at
the playground and they would meet later for movie night. Ruby didn’t put up any fuss, and quickly went upstairs.
Danny didn’t know why he lied to her. If he had asked, he was sure that Ruby would have followed him to
the park, but he couldn’t explain it no matter how long he racked his mind over the subject – something was
inexplicably different about tonight.
Danny rushed down the street and retraced his streets steps back to the park. As he rounded the corner, he
stopped and darted back behind the building. He hugged his body tightly against the wall, and slowly crept his head
around its corner.
Sitting on the swing set of the park, completely alone, was Skyla. Her baseball bat was lying beneath her feet,
her ponytail was placed over her right shoulder, and she was whistling gently to herself as she swung her feet lazily
back and forth. What was more important:, Skyla was still completely alone at the park.
Danny’s head swam with thoughts, each worse than the last.
Did Skyla have no place to go? Danny had never met her parents.
Did she live in the park? He only went to the park on Fridays.
Commented [J1]: To keep things simple, I would
recommend reserving the use of single quotation marks for
quotes within quotes.
Commented [J2]: I will make all spacing between
sentences consistently one space.
Commented [J3]: No need for the comma here, as the
compound predicate shares a single subject.
Commented [JT4]: I have copy edited for American
English spelling, grammar, punctuation, and style. Most of my
corrections were small things like comma placement. In
particular, I removed commas when they were not needed,
such as in sentences with single subjects and compound
predicates. I also made a couple of changes to your preposition
choice, essentially substituting in the most common choice for
American-style native English (saying someone was “in” the
park rather than “on” the park, for example). Finally, I made
sure that the spacing between sentences was consistent by
providing only single spacing. Occasionally, there were three
spaces.
This is a Level 1 Basic Copy Edit.