Substantive Editing
- Do you feel that your paper can be presented in a better manner or is not up to the mark?
- A niggling feeling at the back of your mind telling you that your paper deserves a second look, especially after all the hard work you put in?
- Are you apprehensive about making the changes yourself?
- Do you have a close deadline to meet and not enough time in hand?
We can help you—with all of the above!
Having developed strong roots in the editing industry, we have worked with various authors and institutions on diverse research works and writing projects. This, coupled with our team of expert and highly qualified editors, quality management systems and calibrated processes, makes us one of the most sought after academic editing organizations, both in terms of quality and speed of delivery.
Two of the major challenges in writing thesis/dissertation/essay are coherence of ideas and manuscript structure. Through our Substantive Editing service, we ensure that the structure, content, language and style of the document are appropriate to its intended function and readership. Since Substantive Editing focuses on content, along with language and grammar, we assign two editors to edit your manuscript to ensure the highest quality within the shortest possible time. Every manuscript therefore benefits from the expertise of two editors with zero content-related lapses.
Our substantive editors will work as both your collaborators and your greatest allies, because we share your desire and objective to succeed in developing the best possible output. Making the paper suitable for an academic audience and the academic discourse community is the main aim of Substantive Editing.
Below are some of the checkpoints we cover under Substantive Editing:
Structural Review
- Check if the organization is logical
- Check if rearrangement of sections is required to achieve the most logical structure
- Check if the arguments have been presented clearly and unambiguously
- Check for flow, pacing and direction through sections and chapters
- Check if the article needs further headings and subheadings
Content Review
- Check if the statement is consistent with the argument and the reasoning
- Check if the statement or argument can be sharpened or defined further
- Check if the thoughts are clearly articulated
- Check if the logic of interpretation is easily understood
- Check if there are any gaps in content or reasoning and suggest ways to fill those gaps
- Ensure paragraph/section/chapter unity
- Check introductory and concluding paragraphs/sections/chapters for accuracy and consistency
- Check if the manuscript contains irrelevant information and whether it should be deleted or modified to suit the paper’s needs
- Check if the terms used are valid in the field or coined
Peripheral Text Review
- Check if data are easy to understand and labelled properly
- Check if the visual presentation requires any improvement
- Check if the statements of fact are appropriately referenced
- Check if references in the text have been cited in the list and vice-versa
Language Review
- Check if the language used is appropriate for an academic audience
- Check if the English sentences clearly express the intended meaning
- Check if there is appropriate language and structural parallelism
- Check if the flow among sentences is appropriate
- Check for accuracy in grammar (subject-verb agreement, article usage, etc.), punctuation (comma, hyphen, colon, etc.), spelling/typography
- Check for relative and complete comparisons
- Check for inexact qualifiers (e.g. very, quite, rather small)
Style and Format Review
- Check if the abbreviations and number style are used correctly
- Ensure complete adherence to journal guidelines in case of formatting
When should you choose our Substantive Editing service?
You should choose this service if
- You are not at all or only mildly comfortable with communicating in the English language in the context of your academic domain.
- You have minimal or zero experience in writing papers in the English language.
- You are not entirely convinced that you have dealt with all the factual errors, contradictions and inconsistencies.
- You don’t have the time to check and/or haven’t reviewed the structure and the overall organization of the paper.
- You are not sure whether you have used the correct spelling, capitalization, punctuation, verb tenses, article usage and the like.
- You are uncertain about continuity, sentence construction, word choice and paragraph flow.
- Your paper is long and you feel you might not have used consistent terms or expressions.
In short, the Substantive Editing service includes all aspects of the Copyediting service and some more.
Apart from the scope and checkpoints mentioned above, we also offer free formatting! Your edited paper will therefore comply with styles such as APA, MLA, Turabian or Chicago. Custom formatting guidelines specified by universities are also taken care of under formatting.
