Category Archives: Editing

How editing can do wonders to your writing

Let me start this by asking you a simple question: What are the important consideration to look up to for academic writing?

We recommend candidates to consider the following aspects, such as:

  • The required word limit
  • The desired level of academic writing
  • The requirement to present content in a clear and logical order
  • The necessary high standard in grammar & spelling
  • Citation & References

All the above mentioned aspects may fit well into editing and yes, it definitely can do wonders to your thesis/ dissertation.

But the point is, how?

We advise researchers to make a clear separation between the process of writing and editing. Editing takes care of the critical attention and refinement that ensures your writing will reach the required standards. The editors at AccuEdit suggest the following process to work on during editing:

  • The logical structure and balance of the dissertation/thesis
  • Observance to the stated topic(title)/ research question/ plan
  • Linking of content
  • Checking the headings for appropriate content
  • The consistency of the line of argument
  • Use of tenses, active and passive voice
  • Clarity of expression
  • Length of sentence
  • Economy of word use.

Editing can be more positive than writing as it is a process where candidates can really raise the standard of academic writing, here is how:

 1)      Reducing Redundancy: Simplifying and Shortening

The major part of academic writing may be true, interesting and well written but the redundancy may affect the value of a well writing thesis. Editing helps in reducing the redundancy and simplifying the content by identifying and removing unnecessary duplication, explanation and irrelevant material. See few examples of removing the redundancy and simplifying the sentences.

Longer Version Shorter version
On a regular basis Regularly
If at all possible If possible
During the month of May In May
During the time that While
Has an ability to Can
It may well be that Perhaps
Take into consideration Consider
Conduct an investigation into Investigate

 2)      Checks for consistency:

A dissertation/thesis is a large document that takes almost a year or more to be completed. The problem with consistency is inevitable in this case and editing solves this inevitable mistake.

  • Consistently avoiding the use of first person and using third person in the writing.
  • It checks for consistent use one tense throughout a section.
  • It checks for consistent use and formatting of heading & subheading.
  • It checks for consistent use of bullet or number list
  • It checks for consistency in referencing style.
  • It checks for consistency in labelling images, tables, figures and other items.

3)      Achieving Academic Rigour through Editing

This feature is typically related to the essence of academic writing and one prime thing that makes editing wondrous (though, it takes a lot of time). The three basic aspects to ‘editing for academic rigour’ are as:

The first one focuses:

®  What did I plan to do and did I do it?

®  What am I trying to convey and do I convey it.

It helps in checking whether you are going in the right direction or not.

The second aspect checks for:

®     Overall reason for your research

®     What did you find?

Basically, it helps in check for a well-supported and clear thread of logical reasoning throughout your research.

The third aspect challenges:

®     Why should I believe this?

This makes you an awkward reader of your own writing which helps in ensuring that initially the claims you have made are either supported or removed.

4)      Linking:

Editing takes care of linking that is an essential aspect of any writing. It guides the reader through different sections or paragraphs to highlight the logical structure of writing.

There are some words that are used for linking:

®     As described in the previous chapter…..I’ll

®     The method just presented is the……the next section describe

®     This is the background as far as……the next section will explore.

I hope, it is clear by now that editing a boon to the researchers and makes wonders to the writing copy.

For any query and suggestion, write us at info@accuedit.com.

Impact Factors & Citations

Impact factors are heavily criticized as measures of scientific quality. However, they still dominate every discussion about scientific excellence. They are still used to select candidates for positions as PhD student, postdoc and academic staff, to promote professors and to select grant proposals for funding. As a consequence, researchers tend to adapt their publication strategy to avoid negative impact on their careers.

The importance of high impact

Young researchers are well-advised to strive for publications in journals with high impact factors especially if they are not sure yet whether they want to pursue a career in academia or in the non-academic job market. Several funding organizations worldwide started to reduce the influence of this parameter on their strategy to fund excellent science.

One of the many critical points is that impact factors describe the average quality of a journal and should not be used for single publications.

Alternative metrics

Many alternatives for impact factors have been suggested for example the h-index (or h-factor) which are primarily based on citations and not on the impact factor of a journal where a paper is published.

Young researchers often wonder whether the impact factor or the number of citations is more relevant.  This question is difficult to answer, however citations become increasingly important with increasing maturity of the career of scientists. Young researchers often have only one or two publications which are pretty new, thus, the number of citations is limited. Therefore, for pragmatic reasons, funding institutions and universities will use the impact factor of the journal as a proxy of their scientific excellence. To evaluate the output of more mature scientists the h-index or the m-index may be used which are both based exclusively on citations and not on impact factors.

Thus, young researchers are confronted with the problem that their scientific quality will be judged based on the impact factors of their publications, especially in contexts which are highly relevant for their early careers.

Academic Editing

Any document consisting of mistakes is of no use; this is why the criteria of editing have came into existence. Editing of thesis, dissertation, grant proposal, course paper, or academic job application is very important element of success for a student’s academic career. It is nearly impossible for a student to edit their own work. Hence, it is always an excellent idea to hire professional editors. We at accuedit.com offer various types of editing and our academic work editing service is up to the mark.

We have editors like Developmental Editors and Comprehensive Copy Editors; they work in close co-ordination with college students, students’ doing their master’s to assist them succeeding with their academic writing projects. Now you can just have a look on what is developmental and comprehensive editing and how our editors will help you.

Developmental editing is a kind of editing which focus on development, and organization of the project. An early stage editing is there in the writing process requiring more than one round to address the issues completely.

The help provided by our developmental editors is related to:

1. Incorporating facts, support, and sources.
2. Identifying gaps in content and suggesting the ways to fill those gaps.
3. Balancing the argument.
4. Providing background and context.
5. Ensuring paragraph unity and progressive expansion.

Whereas, comprehensive copyediting includes editing of line, copyediting, and proofreading. It can take more than one round because of the back and forth process of editing and correcting.

Have a look for what a comprehensive editor can do.

1. Diagnose and give suggestion for formation of sentence, and flow.
2. Helps attending evenness of style, inclination, and voice.
3. Edit for active voice, or passive voice as appropriate.
4. Helps suggesting titles.
5. Helps attending to the academic audience, together with jargon issues.
6. Helps in correcting punctuation and mechanical errors.
7. Helps in formatting the fonts and tables.
8. Helps ensuring alphabetical and numbering sequence accurateness.

How to Learn The Rules of The Latest APA Editions

As students sit down to work on their project, they are aware that they have to follow a certain style of formatting. The university has laid down the rules that they have to obey when they are preparing the written content of their research. In some cases it could be the APA style that the review board has prescribed for the students. The APA style manual is quite popular for its simplicity, and it is often used across disciplines.

However, for many students following a formatting style causes a lot of problems.

  • There are different versions of the APA style, and they are called editions, and there are quite a few differences between one edition and the next.
  • The university board might tell the students which edition to use and in other instances they might leave it up to the students themselves, leaving the student at a loss for which formatting style is ideal for them.
  • Incorrect formatting will make the students lose marks, which is why many students get low final grades

So what are the solutions to this problem?

  •  There are many free tutorials available both online and offline and in print, visual and audio that allow students to learn the intricacies of the formatting style.
  • The students can buy a book on the latest edition of the APA, and keep it with them for reference when they are writing a project.
  • They should be especially careful when putting the headings and following grammar rules because it is easy for these minor rules to be overlooked by them.

It is a good idea to practice the formatting style even when doing small projects since the preparation will come in useful when they are handling all the long term assignments.

Learning from Professional Editors

When writers sit down to get their dissertation edited by a professional editing company, they should try and see how best they can learn from the editors. There are many writers who are quite lackadaisical with the way they write. This is even more pronounced when they come from a research background and focus more on the results of their experiments than on their writing of their analysis. Therefore, it becomes the responsibility of the editors to brush up on all the mistakes that the writers have made.

1In some cases though the writers have a genuine problem in the sense that they do not quite have the command of language that someone from a senior academic background is expected to have. Thus, when the editors are looking through the manuscripts, they find mistakes in grammar, spelling, punctuation, formatting, sentence construction and chapter construction.

But if the writers were serious about improving their language skills then they would sit with the editors and learn how they use language. Most dissertation companies work closely with the customers and inform them of the changes they have made in their content. They are constantly in touch with them over the course of working on the assignment. It would not be too hard for the customers to sit with the editors who are looking over their assignment and then learn how they rectify the mistakes in their project.

This is one of the best ways of learning more about how to use sentences correctly, where the punctuation marks are to be used, rules of grammar across different countries, and how the MLA or the APA style needs to be formatted. Those who spend much of their time in academics will have to do a lot of writing, and the higher up they go, the higher the standard of writing they have to follow. Therefore, it would be a good idea for them to sit with the professional editors and learn a thing or two about language.

Write to get Published

Researchers may write on their many research efforts but only if their works are published they get acknowledgement and authority over their work by the fraternity in institutions and industries. Academicians and researchers need to keep adding to knowledge in their chosen area and publish articles in journals and academic magazines. Writing for journals and other publishers is highly professional real time writing and the write-up should be errorless as a book and comply with prescribed requirements. In cases where the author retains the copyrights of his/her write-up, the write-up, its abstract or modified versions can be submitted to different publishers, getting published in several relevant publications fetches recognition within different groups and circles, like institutions, organizations and industries.

Conveying thoughts efficiently with an editor

There are many reasons why a writer of any hue should hire a professional editor. The most important is to confirm the effective conveyance of thoughts. The writer tries to tell the public something through the material he prepares. If his words are not correctly chosen then the audience will not be able to know what he is trying to say. Then all the work he has put in would be for nothing. The editor looks through the material and formats it in a way that will be easy for the audience to understand.

Can Dissertation Editing Be Avoided?

You may be a very good writer who has a native command of the language. You may also be aware of professional writing styles and standards. However, all these skills are still insufficient to avoid the task of dissertation editing.

Even though a writer is honed, a dissertation will always need a review. There are innumerable aspects of language and presentation of content that it is simply not possible to take care of every minor thing while developing a dissertation.

All such linguistic and compliance aspects are considered by a professional editor. An academic editor can help you polish your language and ideas. This further makes your documents much improved, targeted, focused and reader-oriented.