The Service
If you are an academic, you spend much of your working life worrying about the presentation of your work. My service is intended to lighten that burden so that you can do real science – I edit manuscripts to prepare them for peer review, and I help address reviewers’ comments on language, style, and consistency. As a result, my clients publish more, better, and quicker. I offer three levels of service: proofreading, line editing, and developmental editing. Click the buttons below to see which one is right for your project.
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A proofread is the lightest of edits. I make sure that all the commas are in the right places, that all the words in the manuscript are spelled correctly and consistently, that the headings are numbered correctly, and such like. Most clients who order proofreads are working on grant applications, reports, and other documents that are generally circulated without any input from publishing professionals. As for journal articles, many journals offer proofreading for free at the end of the publication process. However, it might still be a good idea to hire me to do it beforehand, just to make sure that your manuscript seems polished when the editors see it for the first time.
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Line editing is my most popular service. If you hire me to perform a line edit, I will focus on sentence- and paragraph-level issues. For example, I might rephrase passages to make them more concrete, more scientific-sounding, or less repetitive. I might also swap the order of sentences in a paragraph to ensure that the argument flows smoothly. I will suggest additions like topic sentences, subheadings, transitions, and such like, in order to make sure that your output is as pleasing to the ear and the eye as it is nourishing to the intellect. It goes without saying that a line edit also includes a proofread.
Well-developed journal papers and book manuscripts benefit the most from line editing. Producing a high-quality draft of these documents generally requires many revisions, often by several co-authors. By the end of that process, you are likely to be so familiar with the text that you will be unable to spot problems with its presentation that would be obvious to a reviewer. Having edited hundreds of manuscripts, I can easily diagnose those issues and make sure that your work will receive the publication decision that it deserves.
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Developmental editing is for manuscripts that are at an early stage in their journey to publication. If you hire me to develop your paper, I will suggest new ways of arranging the information that you have gathered, and I will tinker with the structure of the text to maximise the likelihood of high-impact publication. I will also perform a proofread and a line edit on the text. The term “developmental editing” also captures the conversion of one kind of text into another (e.g. book manuscript ↔ journal article ↔ conference presentation), as well as other tasks that involve very substantial modification to your text.
I readily concede that the boundaries between the three services are more than a little porous. In practice, the different sections of a document will often require different levels of editorial attention. It is not at all uncommon for me to develop an introduction, to proofread a results section, and to line-edit a conclusion. If you believe that I can improve your manuscript, get in touch, and we will work together to decide which services are best for you.
How does it work?
If you are interested in hiring me, you should start by sending me an email, by writing to me on LinkedIn or ResearchGate, or by completing my booking form. Once I hear from you, I will ask you some questions about the topic of your paper, its length, the journal(s) that you are targeting, and your expectations about my services. We can exchange emails, or we can have a short call – whatever works best for you works best for me. I will then give you a quote, and, if we come to an agreement, I will begin editing your paper.
When I finish the first draft of the edit, you will receive three things:
an edited version of your text, with tracked changes;
comments in the Word file which explain the most substantial changes to the original and highlight passages that you should review in order to make sure that I have not accidentally changed your intended meaning; and
an email that highlights the recurring grammatical, stylistic, and typographical issues that I have identified, how I have fixed them, and what action(s) you could take to improve the text further.
After you have gone over the first draft of the edit, you can send it back to me, and I will proofread your revisions and recommend additional changes. Once you are satisfied with the text, I will submit an invoice to your institution or, if you prefer, to you personally.
Rates
The length of your text, the scope of the service, and your expectations about the final outcome all determine how much labour I will need to put into your manuscript. For this reason, I can only quote specific prices after I have seen your raw text. This said, I understand that most clients like to see ballpark figures (and for good reason!). The table below contains an indicative breakdown of my rates.
The word counts that I use to calculate fees exclude footnotes, appendices, bibliographies, and other addenda (unless you would like me to edit them, too). A line edit includes a proofread; a developmental edit includes both a line edit and a proofread.
Many universities cover editing expenses, so do reach out to your faculty administration if you believe that my services can be of use to you. I am a registered university supplier in Spain and France, and I would be happy to register in other countries as well if required.
Unless your manuscript is very short, It is best to book me at least a few days ahead of your deadline. I am available on weekends. The weekend service comes at no additional cost if you book it at least a week in advance; in all other cases, I apply a 50% rush charge.
Sample Edit
There are thousands of editors online, and we all claim to provide the exact service that you need. In truth, this is bullcrap - we all know that every client has distinct needs, that every editor has distinct domains of expertise, and that you can only find out whether an editor is right for you after you begin working with them. In a perfect world, editors would show you their portfolios before you hire them, but most of our clients are highly reluctant to allow us to air their dirty laundry online like this. Fortunately, one of my friends - whom I shall leave unnamed - volunteered to have their work edited for this very purpose. Click the button below to download the sample edit.
A note on use: all of my edits come in a .docx file, with “Track Changes” enabled. Typically, when you open the file, you will only see the finished version of the edit. If you want to see what changes I made to the original mansucript of the sample, click through to the Review tab in Word, and then change “All Markup” to “Simple Markup” (instructions). Make sure to also click “Show Comments” in order to see my detailed feedback. Note that the free sample is a line edit – if you order a developmental edit, you would get much more extensive comments.
Ethics
I never ghostwrite papers. I can only improve your texts stylistically and grammatically.
I do not work for undergraduates and for students on taught master’s courses. I know that there are many editing websites online that serve these segments of the market. If you are considering using one of them for a term paper or for your master’s thesis, I would urge you to reconsider. University is likely to be the last opportunity that you will have to learn how to write well, and you would be short-changing yourself by outsourcing the work.
I neither plagiarise nor help others to plagiarise.
I do not edit papers for paper mills or for predatory journals.