What is Academic Editing?

Academic editing is a specialized comprehensive service that apart from improving the language and
formatting of your document, also helps strengthen, streamline and highlight your ideas and
arguments, while removing repetitive data.

Why is Academic editing important?

Working on a range of document we may come across grammatical mistakes, errors, in-
appropriate language. We need academic editing to strengthen the message which we want
to send to the reader, highlight the main idea effectively and make the readability of the
document easy.
Academic editing is important for the following reasons.
1) Make the best first impression:
Academic edited document can help you make the best first impression. Especially
for thesis writing. Any document that is poorly submitted with errors in referencing,
formatting, mistakes in chapter heading and capitalisation, lengthy abstract
improper usage of keywords. These can affect the readability of your document. This
type of documents or research when presented displays less confidence. To avoid
these common mistakes, academic editing is very important before your final
presentation.
2) Communicating your message effectively:
The content of your document is the key element in your document and academic
editing can help in making your article better. Writing is not an easy task for anyone.
The most challenging part of writing is communicating it efficiently to the reader.
This is where academic editing and proofreading can help you achieve this goal.
a) Standard of expression in your writing -
Your content might be brilliant, intuitive, insightful. However, making your
content readable might still be a challenge for you. Many academic writings have
poor grammar, vocabulary errors, lengthy message, poor sentence formation.
These types of errors reduce the readability and effectiveness of the document
and make it less engaging for the reader. To avoid such mistake and make your
academic document more engaging and readable, keep a thorough check on
grammatical errors and display a strong vocabulary in your content. Keep the
content crisp and to the point.
b) Clarity in the message –
In any document, the flow of writing is very important to help the reader
understand the message more clearly and concisely. Academic editing helps you
do the same. Without altering your content, just improving the flow of the
writing, proper formatting where ever required and usage of strong vocabulary
can make your writing very engaging and readable. Academic editors are a fresh
pair of eyes for your document. A better judge to see if the content written is
delivering the message it has to deliver properly or not. Academic editors are
trained formally and are skilled to improve the standard of writing of your article.
 c) Polished writing –
When you are writing the document, you will be attached to your prose. The
content you’ve written and the knowledge intends to blind you (writer) to errors
and the flow of writing. So, having an academic editor will be like a fresh set of
eyes for your article and helps you correct your document by polishing it overall
and increase the readability of your writing.
3) Academic editing to improve overall writing skills:
Academic writing plays an important role in improving overall writing skills of an
individual. We are aware of how many students or even adults struggle with poorly
written document and receive an awkward feedback on their mistake form the
supervisors. Writing is not an easy skill and it makes it even more difficult to give an
error free academic document in a single go.
This is where academic writing comes to play to correct errors in punctuation,
vocabulary, proper formatting and referencing and make your writing very engaging,
short and readable. These academic writings have a lot riding on them from college
scholarships to research paper publications, promotions, grants and many more. So
it only makes sense to ensure that the submissions of your writing are of high
standards. Academic editing eventually helps you to focus on minute details and
mistakes, improve the writing and reading experience overall.

Types of Academic editing:

1) Developmental editing:
Developmental editing happens at the initial stages of writing when the writer
has an idea or a rough sketch of the concept. Developmental editing focuses
more on the outline of the content rather than grammatical and punctuational
details. It focuses on organising ideas for the concept structure the content and
ensures a smooth transition between the idea.
2) Evaluation editing:
In evaluation editing writer focuses on the structure, flow of content, overall
evaluation of the subject, completeness and overall quality of the content.
Evaluation editing focuses on key points and areas of concern in a document.
3) Content Editing:
Content editing in other words substantive editing or complete editing. In
content editing, the editor not only focuses on the structure if the writing but
also provides full corrections, identifies incomplete sentences, segregation of
chapters, sections and sub sections and smoothening the flow of the content to
ensure good readability.
4) Line Editing:
A line editor, unlike evaluation editor does not focus on the overall writing
but focuses on the word choice in the content and if every sentence has
the intended impact in the reader mind
 5) Copy Editing:
Copy editing is done as a last step after completing the document. A copyeditor
will meticulously go through the entire book and identifies any punctuation
errors, vocabulary mistakes or any grammatical mistakes
Eventually after making all types of corrections, by doing the academic editing the
document is proofread and submitted to ensure higher readability and smooth
reading experience with an impactful high-quality content.