Editing services and research: Common misconceptions

• May 28, 2020
• 5 min read

As if academic writing wasn’t hard and intricate enough, there are technicalities of editing and proofreading that only a fraction of the academic writing community knows. This gives rise to so many misconceptions about sending your work to a professional editing service and hampers your work.

#1 An editor/proofreader might rewrite your work.

This is certainly a valid concern for some writers, but the role of a professional editing and proofreading service is not to change what you have written but to give you suggestions for improvement and correct the superficial grammar and punctuation errors.

Rather, a professional editor revises the distinct elements of your work such as structure and style to help improve your research and bring out the intended message more strongly. If it requires more intensive changes, for example something to do with the actual content in your thesis that the editor finds a little hazy or skewed, they leave suggestions instead of changing the text completely.

#2 You only need to edit your research once.

Usually, a lot of writers make this common mistake of thinking that their writing is 100% error-free. No matter how skilled a writer is, their work will have mistakes, be it small or consequential. Even the most famous and experienced writers have to make multiple revisions of their work. Revising your work helps you understand where you need to clarify meaning, where do the arguments need to be more cohesive and strong, and make your work impactful.

#3 Editing and Proofreading: aren’t they the same?

Editing and proofreading confuse many people, many thinking that both of them are the same. While both terms might be close enough, they aren’t similar.

Editing involves revising structure and flow, maintaining the authenticity of the author’s voice, and making the content clear.

Proofreading, on the other hand, is the ultimate stage of revision of a document’s completion. It helps proofreaders skim the final copy for any surface level mistakes likes grammatical errors, typos, punctuation mishaps and irregularities in formatting. The rectification of these issues can mean the difference to your research getting accepted or rejected.

#4 You don’t need an editor if you’re publishing it

In comparison with traditional publishing, self-publishing might be better in terms of censorship and limitations. But this does not mean you should edit your own research. Since a writer is too close to their work, they might not catch the mistakes in their work if they edit and proofread it themselves. They already know how their work is going to look and sound, so they have a biased view while editing and proofreading it.

#5 All editors can edit research

Writing and editing are not interchangeable skills. This does not make any sense. For example, academic fields use specific terminology that only works in a particular context. That is why there are different types of editors for different types of documents. A fiction editor cannot have the same depth into editing academic documents and research and will not be familiar with the terminology.

At PaperTrue, we have specialised editors who are experienced in editing all types of documents: academic, fiction, non fiction and more.

These 5 misconceptions about sending in your research to an editing and proofreading service are very common. We hope that clearing them will help you understand the importance of making a good number of edits to your research.  No matter how confident you are in your research and writing, it is important to submit your document to a professional editor and proofreader. They will take to one step ahead in your quest for getting published!

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Rishi

Rishi was a zealous student at IIT Bombay when he realized, firsthand, the power of good language in effective communication. As part of this belief, after a brief stint in a hedge fund, he co-founded PaperTrue in 2014.