How Can I Help?
The difficult truth is that writing is really a matter of rewriting. Your first draft begins the process, but editing is about completion. Writing in drafts removes the basic errors of grammar, punctuation, syntax, and spelling and sharpens your ideas. But editing can also deepen your ideas, inject the text with energy and invite the reader into the more realised world of your argument. Read on to find out how we could achieve this together.
Line Editing
Line editing involves repairing your text at the level of style and tone by adjusting the register, editing for word choice and fixing structural problems. This “go large” approach to editing takes in the whole text and approaches the prose to assess how convincing your argument is. I offer suggestions on how to make sentences stronger and paragraphs more logically connected. By smoothing out the readability and coherence of the writing, the deeper structure and argument of the text can shine through.
At this more intense level of reading, I don’t typically focus on smaller house-style edits such as grammar, syntax, or spelling consistency. It would helpful for us to discuss and agree the kind of work your text may need, depending on your level of language and the stage your project is at. Email me for more details and to discuss a plan to help your text.
Copy editing
In copy editing a piece of text, I “go small” to take into account grammar and syntax and remove more mechanical obstacles to the textual flow of your ideas. I also pay attention to the more factual basis of the text, where obvious errors can creep in (e.g. citing a real-world event occurring in the wrong decade or century), or where an author’s cultural assumptions may simply miss a reader’s need for context (often what we take for granted about our own cultures can seem strange and novel to new readerships).
At the sentence level, energy, balance and concise expression is of concern here, so overuse of prepositions or nouns, or incorrectly-used grammatical structures are targeted and repaired. To achieve all of this, I work from an agreed-upon style sheet that lays out the publisher’s requirements for good usage as well as your own new terms or novel usage of words and phrases.
Whether you are a seasoned writer or a postgraduate researcher preparing a dissertation, Copyediting can help you focus your effort and produce an even better-argued piece of writing.
Proofreading
When I proofread, I correct the more fundamental mechanical parts of a text such as punctuation, misspellings and spelling conventions, and unconnected parts of speech. The purpose of such an edit is to provide a ‘clean’ copy, that is, one free from errors that can be submitted to your publisher or thesis committee.
Proofreading does not involve any fact-checking, improving the prose or repairing the structural elements of the text. As such, this would be the final kind of edit you would look for, when you are satisfied with your text more generally and ready to submit it.
English Styles and Conventions: language and culture
When writing in English as non-native users of the language, writers often struggle to recognise and account for the conventions that govern what many readers have learned to expect from a text. Certain idioms and turns of phrase can be difficult to use without descending into clichés or losing your authorial voice; what may sound formal may actually be a slang term (kids are actually baby goats!).
By trying to achieve a native textual flow, writers often ask editors to ‘take over’ some of the writing, but don’t be too quick to do so. Your own voice is developing all the time, all of our voices are, and sounding slightly less fluent yet authentic is better than being edited to sound native, where you lose that vital sense of control as an author.
Working with an editor that can help you grow as a writer and develop your confidence in your voice is an important goal as you explore and grow your abilities on paper (or screen). When I work with authors, I don’t wish to simply correct them; I want them to see their potential as communicators of original research and deep ideas to new audiences.
Translation and AI
Writers these days regularly rely on AI to achieve a workable translation from their native language into English. There are a number of basic problems with this approach and at least one subtle but serious drawback. AI relies on scraping, without attribution or compensation, other people’s (and your) work from across the internet. The work of AI, research is beginning to suggest, also involves the atrophying of the skill of writing English: as the AI is doing the work, the writer becomes an observer in the process and so learns little if anything from the whole affair. From an ecological standpoint, large learning models are beginning to dominate the world’s energy demands. So there’s that.
AI also assembles a statistically average rendering of your text in the target language, providing a typical response, which not only needs to be checked by human eyes anyway, but which also often relies on standard, clichéd, and formulaic translations. The whole idea of writing something new and interesting – something that can contribute to an ongoing global conversation about an important problem – can be flattened by "average" prose and recycled arguments in automated translation. Just as with your research, don’t rely on just one source. Verify everything, even your translations.
So what can I help you to accomplish?
Before I begin to work with you, we will discuss and agree the level of assistance you would benefit from. The process is iterative, in that: I will read, edit, and comment, and you will reply either with explanations to help me edit further, or with your own sense of where the text should be headed, and this process may be repeated until you are happy you have said what you set out to say. Working together, we can improve your writing, to find its ground of expression and connect with your readership. Email me to find out more and begin the conversation.