I am looking for a line edit on a short story - 4000 words.  By line
editing I mean spotting typos, grammar errors, syntax errors,
punctuation errors, subject-verb disagreement & phraseology.  I am not
looking for critique, character analysis, or plot suggestions. Anyone
taking on this question should be familiar with Strunk & White or CMOS
and have editing experience.

The editing can be carried out on Writely, a web-based word processor.
All changes are automatically recorded for comparison with the
original. You need not keep track of them and you need not motivate
your corrections ? just make whatever changes you feel are
appropriate.

Here are some excerpts from the story to help you evaluate the text. 

http://www.writely.com/View.aspx?docID=dhc72bs2_6gf6tqp&revision=_latest

Once you decide to take on the question I will send you the
edit-invitation needed for the complete manuscript.

Please respect that this work is under copyright and not in the public domain.

Thank you

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Clarification of Question by mindprints-ga on 23 Aug 2006 15:27 PDT

If I am tardy in replying it is because I am sleeping - my time zone is GMT  +1

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Clarification of Question by mindprints-ga on 24 Aug 2006 13:10 PDT

"Phraseology" is no longer part of the question.

All communication between customers and Google Answers Researchers
must be conducted here on the site, in public. If the "edit
invitation" is a password of some sort, be aware that it will be
viewable by anyone, as will your manuscript.

Thank you for warning me.  As for IP theft, it is not a concern; short
stories are not much worth in this world - you are lucky if you can
give them away. But I don't want this situation construed as a
"publishing" of the story - that could cause problems for me with
other "real" publishers later on down the line.

yes, I made the excerpts public - which is not the equivilent of
publishing the story and if anyone chooses to do the edit then, yes, I
will need to provide them with the Writely address and password for
the entire text and then they may go there and see it.

But!!! only the first person who logs on using the info I give here
will be able to do this - since they will be asked (by Writely) to
change the password. And that will be their secret - even I won't know
it.

There's no way to guarantee that the first person who logs on will be
a Google Answers Researcher. Once the password is posted here, anyone
will have access to it, and it could conceivably be used by a site
user with malicious intent.

That is true :-) someone could be lurking out there waiting to pounce
... but it seems highly unlikely considering the circumstances and
even so - both I and the researcher would realize that right away and
then I would post a new password.  And if someone was to grab that and
do evil, well then, I wouldn't know what to think - I would think the
world a worser place than i had imagined.

Incidently, in the time it took you to comment on my question you
probably could have edited the story!

She certainly could !

If I were you I would change the odd 'was' to 'were'
- the subjunctive is rather subjective - but i find it can jar.

>> Incidently, in the time it took you to comment on my question you
probably could have edited the story!

I spent approximately two minutes posting these comments. Editing a
4000-word story would probably be a two-hour task, at the least.

I agree that it would be a two-hour job (at least) to edit 4000 words.
 Perhaps it would take less if you don't include "phraseology."  I
believe that editing phraseology turns it into more than a line edit.
But still, it's a long edit.

Which, is exactly the kind of help I need: sorting out the was's and where's

OK - I will take out phraseology.  I agree that that could complicate things.  

My situation is that I haven't lived in an English speaking country
for 35 years and I know that affects/effects my writing and it is the
sort of thing one doesn't see oneself.  I was hoping that this could
be done in an hour or less.