You take someone else's writing and make it clear, correct and fit for its reader.
Click through it
Pay, the path, pros and cons and the facts on one printable page. Good for a wall or a guidance counsellor.
Or read the whole thing here
What you earn and what it costs to get there.
Typical
$72,000
Editorial assistant
$42,000
Senior or managing editor
$104,000
Job Bank's national median is $34.62 an hour, about $72,000 a year full time. Book publishing sits at the bottom of that range, government and corporate communications near the top.
$42,000 to $50,000
Editorial assistant at a publisher or magazine
Book publishing pays the least and has the most applicants. Editing inside a government department or a large company pays noticeably more for the same skills.
$40 to $75 an hour
Typical Canadian freelance editing rates, higher for technical and medical work
Freelancers charge by the hour, the word or the project. Beginners quote low, then learn how long a manuscript really takes and raise their rates.
Tuition, fees, exams and kit. Not rent, food or travel
Nothing here is legally required, so the low end is somebody who came in through another degree or through the work itself and paid only for style guides, software, and one Editors Canada exam to show clients what they can do. The high end is a four year English or communications degree plus a part time editing certificate and the exams. A two year college publishing diploma sits in between at roughly $8,000 to $16,000 in tuition. The credentials matter most to freelancers whose clients have never met them.
None of this is required to work. The certificate and the exams are how freelancers prove themselves to clients who have never met them.
Salary
Publishers, magazines, government, universities, companies with a content team.
Freelance by the hour
The most common freelance arrangement, and the fairest for messy manuscripts.
Per word or per page
Common for proofreading and copy editing where the work is predictable.
Per project
Used for whole books once you can estimate the time accurately.
Retainer
A set monthly fee to be available to one regular client. The steadiest freelance money.
The exact path from high school to qualified.
No licence exists. Employers and clients hire on a test edit, not on a diploma.
High school
Grades 10 to 12
English above all. Write, and get used to having your own work marked up.
Degree or diploma
2 to 4 years
English, journalism, communications or publishing. Editors also come from science, law and engineering and edit in those fields.
Learn the actual craft
6 months to 2 years, often part time
An editing certificate or Editors Canada workshops. You learn the levels of editing, mark-up, and Canadian style rules.
First paid edits
During and after school
Student publications, a small press, a non-profit newsletter, an internship at a publisher. Build a list of jobs you can name.
Staff job or freelance list
1 to 4 years in
Either an in-house role, or four or five regular clients who send work without being chased.
English
Grammar, structure and argument. Read your own writing out loud.
A second language
Learning another language teaches you how your own is built, and bilingual editors are in demand.
Science or business
Editors who understand a technical subject charge more than generalists.
Media arts
Layout, typography and the software publishers use.
Anyone can call themselves an editor. Editors Canada runs a voluntary certification with five credentials: Certified Proofreader, Certified Copy Editor, Certified Stylistic Editor, Certified Structural Editor, and the CPE (Certified Professional Editor) for anyone who passes all four exams. The exams rotate on a two-year schedule and cost $450 for members or $550 for non-members each in 2026. No employer requires it, but freelancers use it to stand out.
Structural editing
Is the whole thing in the right order and does it answer the reader's question? The biggest changes happen here.
Stylistic editing
Sentence by sentence clarity, tone and flow.
Copy editing
Grammar, consistency, facts, style rules, captions and headings.
Proofreading
The last pass on the laid-out pages, catching what everyone else missed.
Things you don't need, but that help.
Medical and scientific editing
Journals, drug submissions and research papers. The best-paid editing there is.
Technical and standards editing
Engineering, government and safety documents where an error has consequences.
Plain language
Rewriting government and legal material so ordinary people can act on it. Growing demand in Canada.
French to English editing
Editing material translated from French is constant work in Canada.
Indexing
A separate craft, paid per page, and in short supply.
Editors Canada membership
Workshops, a public directory clients search, and a standard rates guide.
Canadian style knowledge
Canadian spelling and the main Canadian style guides. Clients notice immediately.
Layout software
Knowing how a page is built makes you far more useful at the proofreading stage.
A test edit you are proud of
Most hiring, staff or freelance, comes down to a short sample edit.
Day to day, pros and cons, where you'd work.
Long stretches of close reading with tracked changes on, broken by queries to the author: what did you mean here, is this figure right, do you want these two chapters swapped. In-house there are also schedules to manage, freelancers to brief and a designer waiting on final text. Freelancing, you work in blocks because deep editing for more than about five hours a day stops being accurate.
The good
The hard parts
Things people don't tell you.
Canadian editing sits between British and American conventions: British spellings like colour and centre, but American punctuation habits in many house styles. Editors keep a style sheet for every single project because of it.
They are different jobs done at different stages. Proofreading happens after layout and catches what the copy editor and the typesetter missed. Asking for one and expecting the other is the most common client mistake.
Job Bank counted about 14,000 editors in Canada in 2023 and reports that 37% of them are 50 or over, so retirements will open some doors.
Last checked September 2026. Pay figures are typical full-time annual amounts in Canadian dollars, based on Government of Canada Job Bank wage data and published salary grids. They vary by province, employer and experience. Tuition is for domestic students.