editing a research paper

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Research paper editing

How to improve a research paper.

Once you’ve written your paper, the next important step is to make your paper better. This step includes research paper editing and it should be completed before deciding to submit your work.

Read on for further information and guidance on how to edit your manuscript.

What is editing a paper?

This is the process of evaluating and making changes to your paper before submitting to your target journal. Editing is a big task, but it is a crucial part in your publishing journey. Most successful publications have been through several rounds of editing.

Benefits of editing

The importance of editing after writing your paper is to make sure that it is persuasive and well-rounded to the reader. No matter how significant your research is, to be successful during the  peer review  process your manuscript must be  properly edited . 

The effectiveness of your writing style and clarity of your work can be significantly improved by good editing. The purpose of the editing step is to make sure your paper is written in an order that communicates your research, and your ideas are presented in the best way.

English language editing  particularly targets passive voice writing and run-on sentences for removal or correction.

To produce a research paper that will make an impact on your target readers, you should understand the kind of editing your paper needs and how editing works in the process of  preparing your manuscript for submission .

Revising and editing are sometimes used interchangeably but this is not the case, there is a difference between revising and editing.

Difference between revising and editing

Types of editing  

There are few different types of editing your research paper might need, they will all help you to avoid mistakes, make your paper easier to read, and help you meet journal requirements.

Some researchers believe that they only need to edit their work for spelling mistakes and grammar, but you must also  have the right structure and presentation for your paper , to increase your chances of publication success.

Content editing This analyzes the organization and presentation of your research. This editing process encourages you to answer questions about your paper like; does the paper make sense? Does it have a good flow? Are the arguments clearly developed and communicated? Are there any major logical gaps?  

Copy editing When you are copy editing your research paper, you’ll make corrections to spelling and punctuation, focusing on grammar, word choice, and enhancing your writing quality. 

Line editing The ‘line-to-line’ check of your research paper’s word choice and writing impact, makes this process like copy editing. Here you will make changes to your work that will give you a strong position paper. Look out for phrasing that sounds imitative and fix run-on sentences. Focus on clarity and simplify your writing so that the meaning is clear and not overly complex.

Mechanical editing Now that your paper has been edited for structure, content, coherence, style, flow, grammar, and word choice, it’s time for a final, but very important editing step. Mechanical editing makes sure that your paper conforms perfectly to the style guide of your chosen journal.

After your paper has been through all these different types of editing, you will be left with a well-presented journal article. You will demonstrate  good use of language  and could stand a much greater chance of being accepted by your target journal.

Expert help for your manuscript

Taylor & Francis Editing Services offers a full range of pre-submission manuscript preparation services to help you improve the quality of your manuscript and submit with confidence.

How to edit 

Now you know about the different types of editing, how should you approach editing your paper?

Correcting your own writing is known as self-editing. This process helps you take a critical look at your manuscript, making changes to your draft until it is in the best possible shape.  

The self-editing process

Understand your draft The purpose of your first draft is to put all your information into readable, clear sentences and paragraphs. This step can be referred to as revising. It requires looking at the “big picture” of your writing. While it takes a little longer to edit from printed work, printing your manuscript allows you to see if there is deviation from what you intended to write and what you typed. This will refresh your eyes and help you become “detached” from your own work. Quickly read through the paper once, highlighting areas of concern with your red pen. 

Take a break After reading through your printed work, it is time to take a break from it. It may seem most efficient to continue working due to a deadline, it will not be the most effective. Staying away from your paper allows you to revisit the work with a fresh set of eyes.

Read for structure If you have not read your paper out loud yet, it is time to do so. Be intentional about listening for the flow, structure, and organization of your paper. If something does not make sense or you find understanding difficult, mark the section, and move on. Read it out loud yourself or have someone read it to you. Hearing your content gives you a different way of reviewing. When you have finished, edit your marked errors.

Read for grammar and punctuation Checking for grammar and punctuation mistakes are part of the editing process most authors focus on. In this step you will be carrying out detailed language checks. As you write more papers, you will get better understanding of your tone and writing style. This will help you to identify the mistakes that you tend to make most often. 

Think like a reviewer To self-edit effectively, assume the role of a person who has never read your paper before. This will help to put you in a state of mind to find possible issues that can cause the paper to be rejected.

Have someone else read your work This is not always necessary, but it is helpful. Getting a fresh set of eyes on your content can highlight mistakes you may not have realized.

Review Make the necessary changes and read through it once more. Check your citations. Get confident in your sentences and paragraph breaks.

Hire a professional Remember that editing is a two-step process. Once you’ve completed your own edits, using the above guidance, you may still require a  professional paper editor  to polish and perfect your manuscript for a successful submission. 

Did you know?

With  Taylor & Francis Editing Services , you can be rest assured that your paper will stand out to journal editors – for all the right reasons – helping make sure you maximize the impact of your research and improve the quality of your manuscript.

Related resources

What makes a good research paper

How to prepare your article for submission

Improve your submission experience

Sharper Pens, Clearer Minds: Editing Revising Tips for Perfecting Your Paper

Table of contents

• 1 The Initial Review
• 2.1 Take a Break
• 2.2 Read Aloud
• 2.3 Use Editing Tools
• 2.4 Focus on One Aspect at a Time
• 2.5 Check Grammar and Punctuation
• 2.6 Improve Clarity and Conciseness
• 2.7 Eliminate Redundancy and Cliches
• 2.8 Verify Sources and Citations
• 2.9 Address Transitions
• 2.10 Consult a Style Guide
• 2.11 Read Backwards
• 2.12 Consider Professional Editing
• 3 Ready to Start Editing?

Essay writing is among the most common assignments students of different majors receive. Embarking on the journey of writing a research paper or essay is the first step in crafting a compelling work. The true magic lies in editing, where your initial draft transforms into a polished masterpiece. Editing essays is not merely a task to correct grammatical errors. It is a nuanced process that involves refining ideas, improving clarity, and enhancing the quality of your writing.

From this article, you will learn:

• what to pay attention to while writing and editing an essay;
• essential rules for editing academic writing;
• how to bring your text to perfection.

So keep reading!

The Initial Review

The initial review of your essay’s plan is a foundational process akin to taking a step back to appreciate your work. It helps to focus on big-picture elements that lay the groundwork for a well-crafted piece. The emphasis is not on the meticulous correction of commas or typos. The main task of editing in the writing process is to check the structural integrity, organizational coherence, and logical flow of your writing.

Consider the initial review as the unveiling of the blueprint of your work. It’s time to examine the architecture, ensuring that each section aligns with the next and that ideas unfold logically. Ask yourself: Does the introduction effectively set the stage for what follows? Is the body of your work structured logically, guiding the reader through a clear and understandable narrative? Are transitions smooth, facilitating a seamless flow of ideas?

During the initial review, these questions helped to create a more efficient and targeted editing articles process. It allows you to identify and rectify any structural weaknesses or organizational lapses. Besides, it helps to prevent the need for extensive revisions in later stages. The initial review in the essay outline serves as a strategic investment of your time, ensuring that your writing meets the expectations of grammatical correctness and captivates your audience with a well-crafted and organized narrative.

12 Tips on Editing Your Paper

Start editing once you have assessed your work and found no critical or logical errors. This process may be lengthy, but it will only improve your text. So, how to edit a paper? Are there any editing techniques in writing? Below are some tips that will help you revise and edit efficiently.

Take a Break

The first thing you need to do before editing is to pause and take a break. You can go for a walk, cook a meal, or chat with friends. You can do anything that distracts you from your paper’s text. After you have rested, you will be able to notice all the shortcomings and errors with a fresh look and edit an essay efficiently. If necessary, take breaks several times, and take a break every time you see that you have stopped noticing errors in the text.

The next important thing to do while working on your paper is to read aloud. You can’t always notice minor flaws when you silently read your paper. When you speak the essay’s text, you can immediately see logical errors and how you can improve the written sentences. If the text looks complicated and confusing, simplify what you have written and replace it with synonyms. After you edit your own writing, read the text aloud again. Also, use overwriting.

Use Editing Tools

Editing tools serve as invaluable companions. They offer insights and corrections beyond manual review capabilities.

Consider these grammar and spell-check software:

• Grammarly ;
• ProWritingAid .

It can catch overlooked errors, ensuring a polished and error-free manuscript. Style guides provide writers with rules for style consistency and coherence. Additionally, tools like Hemingway Editor analyze writing for readability and suggest improvements.

Professional essay editing tools don’t mean relinquishing creative control. It empowers writers to refine their work more comprehensively.

Focus on One Aspect at a Time

This tip will help you cut down on all your shortcomings quickly. It focuses on individual tasks and assists you to complete the task more efficiently. Self-editing is a process that takes place in several stages. Imagine you decided to eliminate punctuation errors first, so read the text, focusing only on this. The second time you decide that it’s time to remove the passive voice, focus only on this and make edits. You need to be careful if you fall into the use of passive voice . This way, step by step, you will improve your paper and make it more simple and interesting. Moreover, you will not miss anything important with this method.

Check Grammar and Punctuation

Now, let’s review the points you should check in your text. Of course, the most important thing is grammar and punctuation. They show not just your mastery of the subject but your education in general. Thus, you need to do a spelling check. No one will want to read a text full of errors and typos. Do not be lazy to spend more time editing your writing and eliminate all the errors.

Improve Clarity and Conciseness

A well-constructed essay not only conveys ideas but does so with meticulous precision and transparency.

The process involves:

• eliminating ambiguity;
• eradicating redundancies;
• embracing a language.

Each word must contribute purposefully, facilitating effortless comprehension and engendering reader engagement. Through assiduous proofreading, one must meticulously pare down superfluous elements, sculpting sentences to embody clarity. Simplicity should be embraced without compromising substance, ensuring a seamless narrative flow. In this pursuit, each word becomes a brushstroke on the canvas of your essay ─ contributing to a lucid, compelling picture. Mastery of the delicate equilibrium between clarity and conciseness empowers your writing, transforming it into a potent medium that resonates with impact and captures your audience with precision and insight. It is one of the most important self-editing tips.

Eliminate Redundancy and Cliches

In pursuing articulate and impactful writing, eliminating redundancy and cliches is paramount. Redundant expressions, often unintentional echoes of the same idea, can dilute the clarity and precision of your message. Common cliches , once vivid, lose their potency through overuse and can detract from the originality of your work. Consider this an opportunity to infuse freshness into your writing, making every word count.

For instance, phrases like “future plans” or “free gift” carry inherent duplicity; the terms imply the concept. Instead, precision can be achieved by employing concise alternatives such as “plans” or “gift.”

By conscientiously identifying and excising these linguistic redundancies and cliches, your essay not only attains a heightened level of sophistication but also ensures that each expression contributes uniquely to the richness of your narrative. Embrace the challenge of crafting economical and distinctive language, and watch your ideas shine through with newfound clarity and impact.

Verify Sources and Citations

In the meticulous process of essay refinement, verifying sources and citations is a crucial step toward academic integrity. Accurate and adequately attributed sources lend credibility to your work, substantiating claims and bolstering arguments. Rigorously cross-checking citations ensures the reliability of your information, guarding against unintentional errors and upholding the standards of scholarly writing. A vigilant approach to source verification fortifies your essay’s credibility and reinforces your commitment to intellectual honesty and the pursuit of accurate knowledge.

Address Transitions

Navigating the terrain of effectively writing your essay involves more than just conveying ideas ─ it demands fluidity in transitioning between them. Addressing transitions ensures a seamless flow, guiding readers through the narrative effortlessly. Transitional word phrases, or employing thematic connections, are thoughtfully crafted transitions bridges the gaps between ideas, enhancing coherence. Elevate your essay by considering transitions not as mere connectors but as architectural threads binding your thoughts into a cohesive, compelling whole.

Consult a Style Guide

A style guide is an indispensable companion in the pursuit of impeccable writing. Consulting a guide ensures formatting, citations, and language conventions uniformity. This meticulous approach adds professional polish to your essay. Also, it conveys a commitment to standards. A style guide is your compass, from punctuation nuances to citation intricacies, for navigating the terrain of writing academic papers .

Read Backwards

Professional editors use this unique technique, and it indeed improves your writing. For a concentrated spelling and grammar review, flip the script. Read your essay backward, starting from the last sentence and progressing upward. It helps a concentrated spelling and grammar review flip the script. This technique unveils overlooked errors by disrupting the conventional flow. Elevate your editing prowess by adopting this reverse perspective.

Consider Professional Editing

The last in our list of tips for editing writing is professional help from a writing service . Use the editing help to make your work easier if you doubt your editing progress or the document’s significance. A skilled editor polishes grammar and style. By outsourcing improvement, you ensure your document reaches its goal. Embrace the assurance of professional scrutiny, allowing your work to be experienced.

Don’t be afraid to ask for help. A professional editor will know what to look for and how to get your essay into shape.

Ready to Start Editing?

As you can see, the editing process is not as scary as it seems to be at first glance. Follow the editing tips from this article, and you will get an essay of high quality without errors, typos, and cliches.

Remember that an influential paper contains:

• verified data;
• a balance of active and passive voices;
• examples, etc.

Your task is to ensure that the essay reveals the topic and that everything is clear and easy to read. Remember to show sources and proper citations to ensure the paper is original and omits plagiarism.

These simple editing tips for writers will simplify the work on any paper and take your writing to the next level!

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Purdue Online Writing Lab Purdue OWL® College of Liberal Arts

Editing & Proofreading

Welcome to the Purdue OWL

This page is brought to you by the OWL at Purdue University. When printing this page, you must include the entire legal notice.

Copyright ©1995-2018 by The Writing Lab & The OWL at Purdue and Purdue University. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, reproduced, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed without permission. Use of this site constitutes acceptance of our terms and conditions of fair use.

This resource covers process and strategy, not correctness rules. For help there, see our many resources on grammar,    mechanics ,  and punctuation .

There are multiple levels of editing, and terminology surrounding editing is often used interchangeably and fluidly. These levels have some overlap between each other, rather than being totally discrete stages; similarly, developmental and substantive editing are more closely related to the "revision" step of the writing process. The four editing levels are:

• Developmental editing: looking at the overall development of the piece, for instance looking for organizational patterns, missing information, inaccurate information, or anything that might confuse a reader
• Substantive editing: making changes to ensure sections (all the way down to paragraphs and sentences) flow logically from one to the next, ensure each paragraph's topic sentence is present and accurate, adding new necessary material to make connections between ideas, removing unnecessary material
• Copyediting: addressing sentence level issues such as style inconsistencies, subject-verb agreement, confusing or wordy phrasing, missing words, missing or inaccurate citations, and any other mechanical or grammatical issues that may be present
• Proofreading: usually the "last pass" before submission or publication; ensuring everything is correct and no lingering errors such as typos, missing words, missing punctuation, etc. remain.

In general, writers should follow this list down in order when revising and editing, from higher order to lower order concerns (in other words, from bigger or more impactful issues to smaller and less impactful issues).

While many writers edit alone at some point during the process, many writers also edit with a partner or writing group. Working with others is strongly recommended when editing; typically, this stage of the writing process comes last or close to last, meaning that writers are more likely to overlook mistakes or potential opportunities (because they have been working on the text for so long). It can be hard for writers to imagine other possibilities beyond what they have already written. A partner or group brings fresh perspective and a real audience who can offer feedback and tell the writer more about what it's like to read their writing. 

If you're intrigued by the idea of a writing group but not sure where to start, you might check out these resources: 

• OWL Vidcast: Writing Groups & How to Form Them
• Writing Groups Toolkit from University of North Carolina - Chapel Hill

Editing Before Submission

When you're ready to edit, it's important to start with higher order concerns and move down to lower order concerns (as stated above). For higher order concerns, see the editing and revision tips on our Organization and Structure page. For lower order concerns (and sometimes higher order concerns — you might realize something about organization while reading carefully for sentence level issues!), here's a list of strategies that our tutors recommend in sessions with graduate writers. They're usually adaptable to different preferences you might have about working digitally vs. on paper, or working alone vs. with a partner or group. Be creative to find what works for you!

• Read aloud. You can do this yourself, get your computer to read your text out, or ask a friend. Hearing your writing read aloud can help identify places where sentences are confusing or difficult to read, highlight missing words, and create some distance between you and your writing so you can more easily evaluate it.
• Color code. You might do this by highlighting or changing font colors on your screen, using markers on paper, or even without color using font styles and sizes. This technique is useful for various applications, including identifying parts of sentences, identifying particular words or phrases you repeat often, or categorizing sentences by idea to check organization.
• Pick individual issues. When you read through with your focus on only one thing, like correcting comma errors or looking for all the places you write "the ways in which," you're less likely to miss instances of that error by getting distracted with other issues.
• Use checklists. Venues such as journals and conferences often have checklists for authors to use when preparing manuscripts; if you don't have a checklist from a professor, you can sometimes use these checklists to help guide your editing for writing for courses as well. You can also keep a checklist of known issues that your writing partners, professors, tutors, or mentors have mentioned on previous writing assignments to help you look for things you know you do (for instance, one former tutor always put her topic sentences at the ends of paragraphs — she keeps this item in a revision and editing checklist and it's one of the first things she addresses when she edits).

Editing with Feedback

Often, graduate students will be writing or editing with some type of feedback. This could be from peers in a class, from an instructor or mentor, or from a peer reviewer at a conference or journal. If you're in this situation, please see our resources on writing with feedback for more strategies and tips.

How to Revise and Edit a Research Paper

• Your introduction engages the reader and clearly presents a thesis that responds to your assignment.
• The body of your paper supports the thesis with laser-like focus.
• Your conclusion convinces your readers of the importance of what you wrote.

Revision often requires changing the structure of your work to achieve a more logical presentation, one that is more descriptive, or one that ensures you have met the parameters of your assignment. More than anything else, it requires that you check all the facts and quotations you used and ensure that you have cited them properly and have not plagiarized a writer.

Academic Writing, Editing, Proofreading, And Problem Solving Services

Get 10% off with 24start discount code, check each part of your research paper.

The first step in the revising and editing process is to start reading your draft from the beginning and make sure that each part—the introduction, body, and conclusion—does the job it’s supposed to do. For each part of your draft, ask yourself the questions on the following checklist. If your answer to any question is “no,” make the revisions necessary to change your answer to “yes.”

Check Your Introduction:

• Does your introduction capture your readers’ attention?
• Does your introduction contain a thesis statement that clearly states the main idea of your paper?

Check the Body of Your Paper:

• Does every paragraph in the body of your paper support your thesis statement?
• Does every paragraph state a main idea in a topic sentence?
• Does every sentence in each paragraph support the main idea of the paragraph?
• Have you taken out any information that is irrelevant, or beside the point?
• Do your paragraphs provide enough support for the main idea of your paper as it appears in your thesis statement?
• In every paragraph, do you provide enough support for the main idea expressed in its topic sentence?
• Do your paragraphs flow in a logical order?
• Do the sentences in each paragraph flow in a logical order?
• Have you used transitions?

Check Your Conclusion:

• Does your conclusion sum up the main points in your paper?
• Does your conclusion help readers answer the question, “So what?”

Your paper is really shaping up now. But a truly excellent research paper has to do even more than get a yes answer to every question in the preceding checklists. It needs to be well written. In other words, it has to sound good and be free of errors in spelling, grammar, and punctuation.

Spell Check

If you’re writing your paper on a computer, of course you can use the spell-checker function. That part of your word processing program picks up most spelling errors. But it doesn’t catch all of them. For example, if you’ve typed the word though incorrectly by leaving out the letter h at the beginning, the word comes out as tough. Your spell checker does not catch that as a mistake because tough is a word. So whether you work on a computer or not, be sure to read through your paper—word for word—to correct any spelling errors. If you aren’t sure how to spell a word, look it up.

Check Grammar and Punctuation

A good knowledge of the rules of language helps you make sure your paper is free of grammar and punctuation errors. You can use the following lists to help you avoid common errors. However, if you have specific questions about the rules of grammar, usage, and mechanics, your language arts textbook explains all of the rules and offers further examples.

Avoid Repetition

If you find that in your paper you have used the same word over and over, replace the repeated word with another one that has a similar meaning. Too much repetition makes writing sound boring. Another kind of repetition to avoid is using the same type of sentence too many times in a row. This can make writing sound boring, too. Varying your sentences makes your writing livelier and more interesting to readers.

Proofread Your Research Paper

After revising and editing your draft, put it away for a day or two—if you have time, of course. Then look at it again. Mistakes that you might have missed pop out at you after you and your paper have had a little vacation from each other. At this point, do your final fixes, making sure everything is as good as you can make it. If you’ve written your paper on a computer, print it out for proofreading. Often, writers see mistakes on paper that they miss on a computer screen. After you proofread, you can type in your corrections.

Another way to catch mistakes and to find areas that still need improvement is to read your work aloud to yourself. Hearing the words in your paper is a particularly good way to call attention to problems such as repetition, improper use of pronouns, and mistakes in subject-verb agreement.

Another good idea is to ask someone else to read your paper and give you feedback. A pair of eyes besides your own can pick up details that you may miss. Your reader, whether a classmate or an adult, should not change your paper. He or she should only suggest additional changes and improvements, which you can make yourself.

Avoiding Plagiarism

Plagiarism, in its most basic definition, means representing other people’s work and ideas as your own. Turning in a research paper that you borrowed, or stole from another student or downloaded from the Internet constitutes plagiarism. So does copying portions of text directly from your sources or from other texts you encountered in your research. It is a serious offense that, in school, can result in a range of penalties—from failing an assignment, earning a black mark on your academic record, to even being expelled. In the workplace, it can result in the loss of your professional reputation and the respect of your colleagues. It can affect your ability to earn promotions or find another job.

Plagiarism is not always deliberate. It can happen inadvertently when students do not understand how to properly present others’ work within their own papers. Even when you go to great lengths to write a paper, plagiarism can occur if you fail to properly cite the words and ideas of others. Plagiarism can happen if:

• You borrow short phrases from your research sources but fail to cite the source.
• You paraphrase an idea from your research using your own words but you fail to cite the original author.
• You represent another students’ work, even a short passage from it, as your own.
• You turn in a paper that you previously submitted as an assignment for another class. (Yes! It is possible to plagiarize yourself.)

More often than not, plagiarism results from a writer’s failure  to properly paraphrase or summarize another’s work or to correctly cite quoted material. Therefore, it is important to understand how to avoid plagiarism and to incorporate strategies for avoiding it in your writing routine. Plagiarism is easy to avoid if you have properly documented your research and if you follow the guidelines of an editorial style book, such as those published by the Modern Language Association (MLA) or the American Psychological Association (APA), to properly cite the research sources you documented.

Choosing a Documentation Style

“Style” refers to the way you present information and write what you have to say. Style guides prescribe conventions for writing and documenting your sources. Numerous styles abound.The three main styles are:

• MLA (Modern Language Association) style: used by the vast majority of high schools, colleges, and in literature, linguistics, and the humanities programs.
• APA (American Psychological Association) style: widely used in the scientific community. Most of example research papers on this site use APA style
• Chicago Manual of Style: typically used in books, magazines, corporate publications, and other popular outlets.

Styles aim to bring consistency to the way in which information is presented.They are designed to promote intellectual integrity and protect writers against plagiarism by specifying the ways in which information should be reported,quoted, paraphrased, and summarized.

In the vast majority of cases, students producing research papers will follow MLA style, although APA style is also used in the academic community.MLA style is widely used among high schools and in undergraduate courses at the college and university level. Straightforward and easy to master, MLA style was developed more than 50 years ago and is also widely used by collegiate presses and scholarly publications.

Upper-level and graduate-level science courses, and other disciplines that present findings in case studies, whitepapers, and reports, typically follow APA style. Your selection of style, however, should always be based upon what your teacher or professor assigns.

Learning the Basics

we review some of the basics of each style and provide a sample paper to illustrate basic MLA format.Students and serious researchers are advised to refer to the style guide of the association whose style they will follow.

Volumes have been published on the rules and recommendations of both styles. The MLA publishes the widely used  MLA Handbook for Writers of Research , as well as the  MLA Style Manual and Guide to Scholarly Publishing  which offers more detailed guidance for graduate theses, dissertations, and papers to be published in journals. The APA offers a variety of style guides, including  Mastering APA Style and the Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association , as well as extensive information online, including a narrated tutorial, at  www.apastyle.org .

Numerous online writing labs (OWLs) sponsored by university writing programs, such as the ones below, also provide extensive resources to help you brainstorm, outline, and write papers, as well as avoid plagiarism:

• Purdue University:  https://owl.english.purdue.edu/
• University of Wisconsin:  http://writing.wisc.edu/Handbook/Documentation.html
• University of North Carolina:  http://writingcenter.unc.edu/

Basic Formatting Guidelines

• Never submit a handwritten paper.
• Papers should be typewritten on plain white 8 1⁄2 x 11-inch paper.
• Use 1-inch margins on all sides.
• Double-space the paper.
• Text should be justified flush left, leaving the right-hand margin ragged.
• Create a header to run consecutively on all pages, flush right, one-half inch from the top of the page.
• Use quotation marks around the titles of articles and underline or italicize the titles of books and other long works.
• Avoid using all caps, underlining, or italics for emphasis.

Other formatting considerations are particular to the style you choose.

MLA Style Formatting Basics

• Include your name, your instructor’s name, the name of the course, and the date in the top left corner of the first page.
• Use a 12-point font that will be easy to read, such as Times New Roman or Arial.
• Use 1-inch margins for all sides of the paper—top and bottom, right and left.
• Create a header with your last name and the page number to appear in the upper right-hand corner of all other pages that follow the first page.
• Avoid separate title pages. Instead insert one blank line (no more) beneath the date and center the title.
• Never add blank lines or extra white space to the paper. Your teacher will suspect you are wasting space to fill a page requirement.
• Type the title in title case, capitalizing the initial letter of keywords.
• Center the title two lines under the header and just above the first line of text on the first page.
• Insert one blank line (no more) beneath the title and begin writing.Do not include extra white space above or below the title.
• Do not boldface or italicize the title and do not use special fonts.The title should be the same size and typeface as the rest of the paper.
• Justify your text flush left.
• Indent quoted excerpts by five spaces on the left and right-hand sides of the quoted text.
• Double space the entire essay including header information, your works cited page, and quoted excerpts.
• Be sure your works cited entries are formatted in the same style and size text as your paper.This is something you should especially watch if you used a citation generator; most produce the citation in their own fonts.
• Indent paragraphs five spaces, or 1⁄2 inch; do not add extra white space between paragraphs.
• Use one space after punctuation.

APA Style Formatting Basics

APA style was developed by social and behavioral scientists to govern the structure and presentation of scientific writing. Unlike MLA style, APA style calls for a separate title page and unique sections within the paper.The sections include:

• The title page
• An abstract summarizing the paper
• An introduction
• A description of the scientific methodology the researcher used
• A summary of the results
• A discussion of the issues

The references page is equivalent to the MLA’s works cited page. It is a list of the sources cited within the paper. As in MLA style, the referenced works should be alphabetized by author’s last name, listed separately, and formatted with hanging indents. Unlike MLA style, APA style makes liberal use of headings and uses five different levels of headings,each with unique formatting requirements. Check the APA Web site or style guide for details.When using APA style, remember to:

• Use a serif typeface, such as Times New Roman, for the text.
• Use a sans serif typeface, such as Arial, for headings.
• Create separate pages for the title page, abstract, the beginning of the text, references, and each appendix, figure, illustration, or table you use in the paper.
• Use captions with charts, tables, figures, illustrations, and other graphics.

Using Quotations/Citations

Any direct quotations or specific information you use from your sources must be attributed to your source, either by mentioning the author in the text or through an in-text citation. Quotation marks must appear around any words or phrases that appear exactly as they did in the original document. If you mention the author to introduce the quotation, you will need to follow it with a page citation to ensure that you avoid plagiarism, as shown in the example below:

Anne-Marie Minnow explained the importance of the Hadron supercollider as “an innovation that will advance scientific understanding by light-years.” (127)

If you do not include the author’s name in your text, you will need to incorporate the author’s last name in front of the page number in the citation, as shown in the example below:

The Hadron supercollider promises to be “an innovation that will advance scientific understanding by light-years.” (Minnow 127)

Note that the first example is a narrative reference in which the writer mentions the full name of the author in order to introduce, or set up, the quotation. In the second example, the citation follows the quotation to identify who the author is. In both cases, it is clear the words being quoted belong to Minnow and, in addition to using in-text citations like those shown above, you will need to cite the source on your works cited page.

Paraphrasing and Summarizing

Paraphrasing and summarizing are ways of discussing the work and ideas of others without quoting them directly. We summarize a discussion or reading to make it more succinct so that it can fit more neatly into our own discussion.We paraphrase a discussion in order to make it clearer or more relevant to our thesis and our audience. For all practical purposes, summary and paraphrase mean the same thing—using your own words to represent another’s ideas. It is equally as important to cite authors whose ideas you summarize or paraphrase as it is to cite those you quote.

Tips for Summarizing and Paraphrasing

• Whenever you summarize or paraphrase, write your understanding of the text you are summarizing. Avoid looking at the text as you do.This will help ensure that you do not inadvertently borrow the writer’s phrases. When you have finished, compare what you have written to the author’s words and correct any inaccuracies, again using your own words. If you used significant words or phrases from the original text, be sure to enclose them in quotation marks.
• As you incorporate your summaries and paraphrases into your paper, cite them as carefully as you cite quoted material.
• Be especially cautious when using word processing tools like Microsoft Word’s AutoSummarize. AutoSummarize shortens a page of text, highlighting key points and phrases that can be inserted into a research paper. Instructors are aware of these features, and many do not consider them legitimate. It is arguable, after all, whether this is you or the word processor doing the job. If you do use this feature, be sure that you edit the autosummary to quote the words and phrases that the word processor extracted from the original and be sure that you cite the source.
• Whenever you summarize or paraphrase, begin with a signal phrase to introduce the material. Be sure to cite the material as you would cite a quotation.

Now we came to the final part in writing.

Back to  How To Write A Research Paper .

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Research Paper Writing Guides

How To Edit A Research Paper

Last updated on: May 13, 2024

How to Edit Research Papers With Precision: A Detailed Guide

By: Betty P.

11 min read

Reviewed By:

Published on: Mar 6, 2024

After you’re done with writing your research paper comes the time for another tedious and time-consuming task, the editing process!

Research paper editing is a mentally challenging task that requires a high level of concentration from the author. 

It goes beyond simply rearranging all elements of the paper in an organized manner. You have to check for grammar, clarity, and logical coherency, and analyze the content of the research document. 

Most research students often skip the editing process, and even some researchers save editing for the last. These common mistakes will always hinder the progress of your research paper.

In this blog, we’ll share practical insights on how to edit your research paper with perfection. Continue reading to understand how you should edit your research paper effectively.  

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What is Research Paper Editing?

Research paper editing is the process of reviewing and improving a research paper to make it clear, well-organized, and error-free. It involves checking and correcting grammar, spelling, and punctuation errors. 

Other than that, the editing process makes sure that the paper follows a logical structure and is written clearly and concisely. Editors also look for consistency in writing style and formatting.

Unlike revising, which primarily focuses on restructuring and refining the content and overall argument, editing hones in on the finer details of language, style, and formatting.

Before learning how to edit your research paper, you should know that there are different types of research paper editing. 

What are the Different Types of Research Paper Editing?

There are different editing processes for research papers. All of them have the same focus, to take the research document toward perfection. You have to use a combination of these editing types to make sure your paper is as close to perfection as it can be. 

Content Editing

• Purpose: Analyze the organization and presentation of the research paper
• Focus: Ensures the paper makes sense, has a good flow, and develops and communicates arguments clearly
• Questions to Address: Does the paper have logical consistency, and are there any major gaps in reasoning?

Copy Editing

• Purpose: Focuses on corrections related to spelling, punctuation, grammar, word choice, and overall writing quality
• Focus: Enhances the overall quality of writing while editing research papers

Line Editing

• Purpose: A 'line-to-line' check focusing on word choice and writing impact, similar to copy editing
• Actions: Involves making changes to strengthen the paper, addressing issues like imitative phrasing and run-on sentences
• Focus: Emphasizes clarity and simplification to ensure the meaning is clear and not overly complex

Mechanical Editing

• Purpose: The final editing step after addressing structure, content, coherence, style, flow, grammar, and word choice
• Focus: Ensures strict compliance with the style guide specified by the chosen journal for publication

Once your paper goes through each strategy and steps in the process of editing one by one, it becomes ready for submission to a journal or presentation. 

Strategies for Editing Your Research Paper

Here are the vital strategies that your research paper editing process should go through. Follow these, and you'll have a well-polished paper ready for submission.

Double-Check the Outline

“ How to edit a research paper outline?”

Before getting into the nitty-gritty of editing your research paper, take a moment to double-check your outline. The outline serves as the roadmap for your paper. It guides both the readers and yourself through the logical progression of ideas. 

Here are some key considerations:

Confirm Structural Coherence

The structure of your paper should align with the outlined plan. Each section should naturally lead to the next, creating a natural progression of ideas.

Check Transitions

Review transitions between paragraphs and sections. Smooth transitions enhance the readability of your paper. This makes it easier for readers to follow your thoughts.

Outline Accuracy

Verify that your outline accurately represents the content of your paper. Each point in your outline should encapsulate the essence of the corresponding section in your research paper.

You should never skip checking the outline in editing research papers. An accurate outline lays the foundation of polished and well-presented academic work.

Edit in Stages

Editing research papers becomes very tedious if you try to edit different aspects of the paper without a plan. 

For example, while reviewing your paper for mistakes, you discover a logical error in the outline. You jump straight to correcting it and after that, you notice a factual error. You start working on correcting that as well. This is the wrong approach! 

• This approach takes too much time, and you might lose track of what you’re actually doing
• It is always a great practice to break down the editing process into phases
• You should devise a plan that breaks down what issues to fix first

As a result, editing research papers will be much easier, and you’ll have a focused approach throughout.

It's a personal preference whether you want to tackle grammar or punctuation first, or focus on the overall logical structure of your research paper. 

Make Your Paper Logically Sound

With a solid outline in place, shift your focus to verifying the overall logic of your research paper. It's important for a reader to understand something logically. 

Here's how you can enhance the logical coherency of your paper:

• Organize Your Paper Effectively

Start by looking at how your paper is organized. Make sure your research paper introduction , literature review , methodology , discussion , and results follow a clear and logical order. Each part should fit together smoothly.

• Establish Logical Connections Between Ideas

Think about how your ideas connect. Check that each point logically leads to the next. Your paper should read like a coherent story, with one idea naturally flowing into the next.

• Maintain a Consistent Tone

Throughout the writing process, maintain the same tone in your paper. Avoid sudden changes in tone that might confuse your readers. Make sure your tone matches the formal nature of academic writing.

One thing to note here is that each sentence in your paper should somehow support the thesis statement . There should be no contradictions in your writing. 

Edit Out any Grammatical or Punctuation Issues

To make your writing clear and professional: 

• Focus on fixing grammar and punctuation issues. Check each sentence for problems like wrong verb use or confusing structure
• Pay attention to using commas, periods, and other punctuation marks correctly, and keep the style consistent
• Make sure each sentence is easy to understand and says what you mean
• Use spell check to catch any misspelled words, especially in technical terms

Tools like Microsoft Word can significantly improve your grammar by offering built-in features such as grammar check, style recommendations, and thesaurus as well. 

Verify Adherence to Guidelines 

One of the vital steps in editing research papers is to make sure that your paper aligns with the required research paper format and guidelines. Check the instruction manual provided to you by the concerned publication or the journal. 

Verify Source Accuracy

Verifying that your research paper sources are accurate. Make sure that your in-text and bibliographical citations are correct, and that they follow the required formatting guidelines 

(e.g., APA, MLA, Chicago).

• All references should follow a consistent formatting style throughout your paper
• Double-check that your in-text citations accurately correspond to the sources you've referenced
• Confirm that all necessary details are included in each reference, such as authors' names, publication titles, and publication dates
• Cross-verify against your sources to guarantee accuracy and completeness

Seek Feedback

Don't hesitate to ask others for their thoughts on your work. Seeking feedback is like having a fresh pair of eyes on your paper. It helps you catch things you might have missed and gives you different perspectives. 

Share your paper with peers, colleagues, or mentors and ask for their opinions. Are your ideas clear? Does your argument make sense? Feedback helps you improve your paper before submitting it, making sure it meets the expectations of your audience. 

Do a Final Analysis of Your Research Paper

The final step is to analyze your paper for one final time. In this step, you should look out for the following key points: 

Think about changing sentences that have extra describing words.

• Use Active Voice and Step-by-Step

Make sure everything has been described by using an active voice. 

• Keep It Short

Rephrase any sentences that seem too long. Break them to enhance the clarity of your text.

Now that we have addressed every strategy to edit a research paper, following a checklist always comes in handy. An editing checklist makes sure that you never miss out on even the smallest of details. 

Here is a great video that brilliantly explains and simplifies how to edit research papers effectively:

Research Paper Editing Checklist

For precise editing, a research paper checklist will always help you out. Below is a comprehensive checklist to follow:

Check out our blog on research paper examples if you want to get help from perfectly edited research documents.

How to Edit a Research Paper - Examples

Look at the following examples of how to edit a research paper for a better understanding.

How to Edit a Research Paper

How to Edit a Research Paper Introduction

How to Edit a Research Paper in APA Style

How to Edit a Scientific Paper

How to Edit a Research Proposal

How to Edit an Academic Paper

To conclude, the journey of editing, from content to mechanical details, transforms your research paper into a polished and cohesive masterpiece. Each step addresses distinct aspects and guarantees clarity, precision, and compliance with publishing standards. 

By following this guide, you can be sure that your edited research paper possesses the quality to meet the highest academic standards. We hope that now, you feel confident about editing your research paper.

However, letting professionals handle your research papers is also a great idea!

You may not have the time to edit your research document, or you might be having a difficult time trying to make your paper error-free. This is where SharkPapers.com will lend you a helping hand.

We have professional academic writers who provide research paper editing services for cheap! Our skilled experts exactly follow the required guidelines, and they’ll edit your research documents to be flawless.  

Give our paper writing service online a visit, tell us what sort of edits you require, and leave the rest to us!

Betty is an experienced writer and researcher who will work tirelessly to provide you with the best writing services possible. A voracious reader, Betty loves learning new things, which allows her to serve clients from a variety of academic disciplines. She has a taste for helping her students, so her work always results in positive feedback.

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EDITING: TIPS FOR REVISING AND POLISHING YOUR RESEARCH PAPER

Editing is an integral part of the writing process that improves the quality of drafts by making the content clear, precise, accurate, and impactful. The editors will assess your manuscript and research paper on the basis of language quality, clarity, and information presentation.

The editing process includes correcting grammar, punctuation, and spelling errors along with improving the overall writing style and structure so that the target audience can comprehend the content.

The question is how will you edit your research paper? Here are four strategies to help authors edit their drafts from a technical perspective.

1. Purpose of editing

2. maintain logic and coherence, 3. edit in phases, 4. content analysis.

Identify the purpose of editing and revising the document. Is to organize the sections? Do you want to make the content more engaging and convincing? Or is it to fix English language errors? Identifying the areas that need improvement will help adopt a more precise approach.

Editing tips for beginners:

• 1. Identify the major areas of concern in the draft and work on it first
• 2. Create an editing checklist to ensure you have followed the journal guidelines
• 3. Have a second look at the sentence while adding or deleting any word

There is a  possibility that your ideas may no longer be clear and well-defined as you continue to write. It is important that all the ideas are interlinked with each other and make sense. There should be a continuity and smooth flow of ideas within the paragraphs.

Tips for maintaining logic and coherence:

• 1. Read the paragraphs aloud, which will help you identify the problem areas
• 2. Use transition words and phrases carefully to establish a link between sentences and paragraphs
• 3. Focus on explaining one idea at a time

Work on one section at a time instead of editing the entire paper in one go. Create a schedule and edit the sections based on their length and word count. This will help you focus on the core elements and content of your manuscript.

Tips for editing in phases:

• 1. Pick one section at a time while editing the document and look for common language errors
• 2. Ensure each section conveys the original meaning intended
• 3. Remove unnecessary information and redundant words

Once you are done with the final draft, analyze the content and ensure that it matches with the formatting and styling guidelines of the journal. Review the content for redundancy, wordiness, and accuracy.

Tips for analyzing content:

• 1. Re-write sentences with modifiers
• 2. Use active voice to describe the methodology and adopt a step-by-step process
• 3. Keep the sentences short and to the point

Checklist to help you edit your next research paper:

• 1. Correct the run-on sentences
• 2. Check sentences for subject–verb agreement
• 3. Use a spell check for identifying spelling mistakes
• 4. Check abbreviations and punctuation marks
• 5. Avail professional editing and proofreading services

Source: https://www.authorassists.com/blog/editing-tips-for-revising-and-polishing-your-research-paper/

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Tips for Editing Your Research Paper (Checklist Included)

| Candace Osmond

Candace Osmond

Candace Osmond studied Advanced Writing & Editing Essentials at MHC. She’s been an International and USA TODAY Bestselling Author for over a decade. And she’s worked as an Editor for several mid-sized publications. Candace has a keen eye for content editing and a high degree of expertise in Fiction.

Writing a research paper requires more than correcting language errors, such as spelling and grammar mistakes. You must also ensure everything is factual and parallel to academic writing standards. I wish I’d known that when I was in university; it would have saved me a lot of headaches.

So, when editing your paper, what should you focus on? Over time, I learned a few things, and I will share them with you! Follow these tips to ensure your research paper is prepared for research publication. I also provided a checklist of everything to consider during the process.

What is the Importance of Editing in Research?

Take it from me, no matter what you’re writing, professional editing is always necessary for your documents. You might not notice the spelling errors and lack of substance in your literature review right after the writing process. That means you should read it several times to edit it.

Editing your research draft is essential to maintain the credibility of your work. You need to ensure that the academic paper follows an academic tone . As someone who generally writes fiction, I struggled with this. But, over time, I learned how to switch between the two.

Such a tone does not require the writer to relate to the readers. Instead, academic editing aims to convey the acquired knowledge in a particular field.

What are the Steps in Editing and Proofreading a Research Paper?

To produce a research paper that is impactful to the academic discipline, you must edit and proofread it at multiple levels.

• Determine your editing purposes. Identifying your objectives will help you pick the appropriate approach and tools for the editing process.
• Revise paper. Examine the main point of your research paper and your evidence. Check if the body supports your thesis and if everything is properly cited.
• Make the edits. In this step, you should conduct the grammar and spelling check. Look for contextual errors and tonal inconsistencies too.
• Look for plagiarism. Use software programs like Scribbr or Turnitin to perform a plagiarism check.
• Follow the established style guide . Check if the research article follows the preferred style guide, whether APA, AP, MLA, or Chicago.
• Proofread. The proofreading phase looks for errors previously missed before publishing.

Top Tips for Editing Your Research Paper

Once you know the basic steps to editing a research paper, here are my tips to make your life easier. These work for me and not only helped me produce quality papers, but even cut down the time it took to produce them.

Choose Your Preferred Method of Editing

Your editing efforts should be structured and organized so you can develop a stable process of editing.

You already know that you edit from the bigger picture to minor details like grammatical errors and punctuation errors. But you have to decide your specific strategies. Will you be hiring a proofreading service? Which resources and tools will you use?

An ideal editor knows how to perform revisions and edits on different programs. For instance, Grammarly might help you with run-on sentences, while Hemingway can help with conciseness. I’d suggest you use both in tandem.

Find an Environment Where You Can Focus

Any professional editor will tell you the importance of a serene workplace for a good editing experience of book manuscripts and research papers. It will keep your mind focused on all aspects of writing, including spelling and grammar checks.

A clean desk and proper lighting will also help you notice more significant writing mistakes. Remember to take a break in between aspects of writing.

For me, it was the public library. I had a loud roommate, and we lived in an old Victorian home that was poorly converted into apartments, so I always heard the neighbors making noise. It was near impossible to concentrate. So, after classes were done for the day, I’d head to the library for a couple of hours to get the bulk of my research and editing done.

Focus on One Editing Issue at a Time

Many university students find the editing processes an arduous task because they try another editing approach while not yet finished with one. The reason we need to follow several steps to editing is to avoid confusion.

Once I learned this tip, it was smooth sailing. Yes, it sounds like more work, but it’s really not. When scanning a document for several types of issues, you’re more likely to miss things. So, scan for one issue at a time, and you’ll actually do a better job in less time. Trust me.

Focusing on one at a time will help you spot the huge and minor errors on the entire document. It also allows you to spot both English-language errors and contextual errors in the research paper.

Make Sure All of Your Work is Accurate

Accuracy is a crucial factor in editing any English manuscript. Aside from checking the elements of grammar, the journal editor should also check the facts the author is writing. Sometimes, they might perform additional editing to correct errors previously missed.

The biggest difference between proofreading and editing is that proofreading looks for mistakes that previous copy editors didn’t spot. They look at all aspects of writing to make the perfect paper before publication.

A proofreader might need a checklist of key questions to look for, from spelling to punctuation errors.

Don’t Always Rely on a Grammar Checker

An online grammar checker won’t be able to replace qualified editors and their complex tasks throughout the editing process. Yes, it’s a great tool to help the process, but don’t rely on it wholly.

Some artificial intelligence apps can detect improper tone based on the target audience you set. Others can even help with your sentence structure and writing styles. But they can’t help you with producing a smooth flow of ideas.

Tools like Grammarly, ProWritingAid, and Ginger won’t help you with the manual revision process. Only your human judgment can decide how excellent your points are. You need to check whether the abstract of your academic document is complete with the necessary info.

Don’t Make These Super Common Mistakes in Research Paper Editing

Here are some research paper editing mistakes to avoid. You’d be surprised how many people do these.

Changing the Research Questions or Problem

Your editing objectives for your research paper should not include changing one research question or problem. Otherwise, you will be in huge ethical trouble for manipulating the findings.

Expert editors agree that the methods of editing a research paper only include following an academic writing style guide and making the paragraph structure logical. You may change a few words on the findings to produce quality writing. But never change the numbers.

It’s not enough that you know common language errors and editing stages. Proper editing requires knowledge of the ethical guidelines when research editing.

Using Ineffective Keywords

Qualitative research paper editing entails using appropriate keywords in the paper draft. It’s a common issue in subject-area editing since many writers and editors overuse or underuse keywords.

Content editing is one of the stages of editing that looks at the style of writing, institutional needs, and more to lift it to a publishable standard. Pick only four to six words that frequently recur throughout the paper.

Not Fixing the Format

Your task is not just to perform editing for revision. It’s not enough for the editor to re-write sentences, conduct a spelling check, or fix style errors. The copy editor, proofreader, and format editors should have enough editing practice to fix formatting issues.

These stages of writing include aligning the paragraphs appropriately and formatting the citations according to the style guide. Font style, page numbers, and paragraph breaks will help you create an impactful research manuscript.

Enhance Your Editing Efficiency

Editing is a systematic endeavor. Whether you’re a college, university, or graduate student, I hope this article gives you tips for editing your research paper.

Remember to edit your paper more than once. Start from the bigger picture issues until the minor details like misspellings and grammar slip-ups. Use the editing checklist above to revise, edit, and proofread your academic document.

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Expert Tips for Editing a Scientific Paper

Preparing Your Journal Manuscript for Publication

After completing your scientific study and writing your research paper, it is time to submit your manuscript for publication in journals. But how do you know that your research is ready for publication?

According to a 2016 study of 5,633 journals indexed in the MEDLINE medical database, the rate of rejection for many top journals approaches 90%. While there are many reasons for journal rejection, two of the main issues leading to rejection of submitted manuscripts are poor writing quality and incorrect formatting. It is therefore crucial to consider receiving scientific manuscript editing services after finishing your research paper if you want journal editors to seriously consider your work for publication.

However, for many research authors, understanding how to correctly prepare a research paper is a painstaking effort that can take years. Learning to apply the most appropriate scientific writing style and formatting rules often means drafting several research manuscripts. But time spent revising language, proofreading the work, and applying correct formatting can take away from the more central work of researchers: conducting and presenting critical research.

An expert scientific paper editor can alleviate this time constraint and help researchers efficiently publish their academic papers in a reputable journal. But before sending a paper to a professional English editing and proofreading service , read these tips that all scientific research authors can apply to both prepare their work for publication and enhance their academic writing and editing skills in future work.

Proofreading and Editing Tips from Scientific Editors

Research authors likely already understand that editing a research paper is quite different than editing an email or a blog post. Issues with grammar, punctuation, formatting, terminology, style, and expression all have an impact on publication success and need to be revised accordingly. But not all scientific manuscripts follow the same rules, so reading many journal manuscripts published in your target journal will help you understand which formatting and style rules to follow.

Differences Between Editing and Proofreading?

Before we discuss revision tips, we should understand the distinction between “editing” and “proofreading”—this will be important when it comes time to choose a freelance editor or editing service.

Scientific paper editing and proofreading are two parts of the same process. For a more detailed breakdown of these two steps in the revision process and to decide which is best for you, see our article on editing versus proofreading.

In short, during the editing process editors revise the content, language, and organization of your research work. This can take the form of content editing or substantive editing (which are done during or immediately after the drafting process), or language editing, which focuses on using consistent vocabulary terms and revising terms, phrases, and sentences so they read more naturally and follow the high academic standards of a journal.

While proofreading, editors find and correct mistakes in grammar, punctuation, spelling, and formatting. Proofreading is the final step in the revision process and should be performed by an English-speaking editor with extensive knowledge of both the English language and academic writing rules and conventions.

Review the Organization of Your Manuscript

Applying the correct manuscript structure is essential to getting a study published in your target journal. This means ensuring that all your content is placed in the correct section and order.

First, check that your manuscript contains all the necessary sections in the right order. Most journals follow the standard IMRD (Introduction, Methods, Results, Discussion/Conclusion) format, but there are often deviations from this section order depending on the journal.

Some common organization issues in scientific papers include:

• Insufficient background information included in the Introduction section
• Methods/Materials section not ordered properly (chronological or another logical ordering)
• Results sections that do not follow the order of the Methods section
• Discussion sections that do not include study implications or study limitations
• Conclusions that simply repeat information without providing new insights

Again, the best way to ensure that your manuscript has all the right content in the correct order is to carefully read articles published in your target journal. See our article and video on the parts of a research paper to understand what information to include in each section of your research paper.

Review Your Paper's Vocabulary and Language

For many research authors (especially ESL authors), the most difficult about academic writing is choosing the correct academic terms and phrases. This includes choosing correct key technical terms, academic verbs, and natural English expressions. While it is not possible to write a “perfect” research paper without having considerable knowledge of English-language conventions, there are some writing resources that can help:

• 100+ Verbs for Academic Writing
• Effective Transition Terms in Academic Papers

Use a Human Paper Proofreader

There are several useful AI writing assistants available to writers. And while it is perfectly fine to use these programs to catch errors during the drafting process, human proofreading and editing is the best way to ensure a flawless manuscript.

Expert proofreaders and editors with extensive knowledge of the English language can understand the nuances in mechanics and usage that lead to many of the writing errors found in rejected manuscripts.

Scientific Editing and Proofreading Checklist

As you can probably tell by now, there are far too many potential writing issues to cover in a single article. But asking yourself the following questions BEFORE receiving editing and proofreading for your scientific paper will help ensure that your manuscript is well written and ready to send to journal editors after receiving final language editing.

• Is the manuscript title concise and relevant? The title is the first element of your manuscript that journal editors and readers will see. Crafting the perfect title for your manuscript can be difficult. Use as few words as possible to relay the topic of your research—this makes it easier for researchers to find your study in journal databases. For more information, read our comprehensive article on how to write a research paper title.
• Are the objectives of your study relevant to your intended audience? Consider the nature and goals of your research. Do they align with the readership of your target journal? Is your work intended for a very specific subset of researchers or a more general readership? While these are questions best asked before or during the drafting process, it is best to identify any potential incongruencies before submitting to your journal.
• Does your Discussion section address your research question(s)? The Discussion section is perhaps the most difficult research paper section to compose. It must address the research question(s) you asked in your Introduction section while also interpreting the Results and discussing the implications of your research. Be sure to remind your readers which gaps in scientific knowledge your study sought to fill and whether your research achieved or failed to achieve this goal.
• Are the materials and methods explained concisely and accurately? The items in the Methods/Materials section should be arranged in a logical order—either chronologically or in order of importance. Readers should be able to clearly distinguish each individual part of this section and understand how they fit together. Use headings (if allowed by your journal’s guidelines) and paragraphs to separate different methods, materials, and participants involved.
• Are the figures and tables relevant and clear? All figures, tables, charts, and graphs should clearly express data and results to readers without the use of explanatory text. However, each figure in the Results section should also be mentioned in the text.
• Are the proper voices and verb tenses used in each section? Using appropriate voice (passive or active) and verb tenses (present, simple past, and perfect) is crucial when writing a manuscript that journals will seriously consider publishing. Different situations call for different voices and tenses. Read more about how to apply passive and active voice and verb tense correctly in research papers.

Using Scientific Paper Editing Services

Because of all the potential language, formatting, organization, and punctuation issues that tend to arise in submitted manuscripts, receiving editing and proofreading is key to preparing your manuscript. Scientific paper editing thus involves both language editing for style and flow, and research paper proofreading to catch remaining grammatical and typographical errors in the text.

Wordvice’s professional editing services , including scientific paper editing services , are an excellent solution to satisfy your manuscript proofreading and editing needs. Our 500+ English editors have expertise in hundreds of academic subject areas and thousands of subdisciplines, so your work is guaranteed to be revised by an expert in your paper’s specific academic field. Our editors also provide extensive feedback, explaining their in-text revisions and providing suggestions to improve your writing.

So before submitting your work to a journal, be sure to read through this scientific paper editing checklist and then entrust your important research to a professional journal manuscript editing service like Wordvice to improve your chances of publication success.

Research paper editing and proofreading services

Our academic editors help you showcase your ideas and arguments in an error-free and well-formatted research paper with refined academic language.

A sample of our scientific editing services

We meticulously edit your paper to refine its grammar, style, and overall structure. Your paper undergoes a combination of the three levels of editing displayed below. You can view a completely edited research paper here .

Through careful research paper proofreading, we will eliminate the following errors:

• Flaws in grammar, spelling, and punctuation
• Errors in the usage of technical or scientific terms
• Incorrect tenses, articles, and commas
• Referencing errors in the APA, Chicago, IEEE, and other styles
• Mistakes in research paper formatting
• Layout issues in graphs, tables, and figures

Our paper editors will enhance the quality of your academic writing. Your edited paper will have:

• Improved clarity and sentence structure
• Polished word choice and formal academic style
• Concise writing with reduced repetition and smoother flow

As part of our research paper editing services, you will get detailed notes to further improve your paper. Your editor's in-depth feedback will include:

• Suggestions to help you strengthen your arguments, fill in logical gaps, and resolve ambiguities
• Tips to improve consistency and cohesion between the segments of your research paper
• Comments to help you connect the heading and content of each section

Additional paper editing services

Plagiarism checking.

We run your research paper through our in-house plagiarism checking software to ensure that your work does not come under fire for plagiarism.

Referencing

We format your research paper according to the guidelines prescribed by your university, prioritizing coherence and readability.

We refine and cross-check the citations and references in your research paper to ensure that they conform to the prescribed guidelines.

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Our expert research paper editors

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Stephanie Helberg Humanities Editor

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The industry's best customer experience, 24/7 customer service until and after delivery, we're here for you until you are 100% satisfied, free revision of your edited research paper, frequently asked questions.

Yes, we do. We edit annotated bibliographies in any citation style of your choosing. As part of our research paper editing services, we check the annotations in your paper for language errors and make suggestions to improve the focus and flow of your notes.

While editing and proofreading your paper, we can certainly point out segments that need to be replaced with more original work, particularly extensive passages quoted or paraphrased from external sources. But we do not rephrase, rewrite, or modify the content of your research paper, since this can harm the academic integrity of your work.

We certainly improve the conciseness of your paper or literature review. However, substantially reducing the word count risks either diluting or entirely changing your arguments and intended meaning. Therefore, as a policy, our editors reduce the word count of your paper by up to 10% of the original word count, but we do not go beyond this limit.

Yes, we help perfect your in-text citations and the corresponding reference list entries for both direct and indirect quotations. As part of our research paper editing services, our editors meticulously follow your university's prescribed guidelines. In case any references are incomplete or missing, we make a comment highlighting the issue so you can add the required information.

Yes, we can edit research papers in the PDF file by creating comments or annotations for you. Due to the restrictions of the PDF format, our editors' changes cannot be directly tracked in the main text. Instead, we leave annotations for you that specify the changes you need to make in your research paper.

We have editors from diverse academic backgrounds who have expertise in working on research papers from every domain. Based on your field and the requirements of your research paper, our editorial coordinators pair you up with the editor or proofreader best suited to your needs.

Yes. While editing college papers, we can help ensure that your literature review highlights one or more gaps in the existing research. We aid you in emphasizing the research gap using compelling academic language without ambiguities, redundancies, or logical errors.

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How to Edit a Research Paper in 5 Steps

Looking at it from an objective viewpoint, editing as a process garners much flak from academics. Scholars either schedule it for the night before the deadline or display their bravado by entirely skipping it. Editing is, by all means, a resource-intensive and mentally taxing task. But it is also a crucial step in the writing process that enhances a document's overall legibility.

Writing a credible research paper demands much more effort than simply arranging all research elements in an organized manner. It insists on verifying the factual and contextual integrity of the enclosed data while abiding by the standards of academic writing. Thus, it is pertinent that scholars know how to edit a research paper appropriately to ensure it is suitable for the readers.

However, looking at it from an objective viewpoint, editing as a process garners much flak from academics. Scholars either schedule it for the night before the deadline or display their bravado by entirely skipping it.

Editing is, by all means, a resource-intensive and mentally taxing task. But it is also a crucial step in the writing process that enhances a document's overall legibility.

Hence, instead of dreading it, scholars should strive to master editing and, during the process, implement the following steps to get more out of their editing efforts.

How to edit a research paper in 5 steps

Ideally, editing is a chronological endeavor. It requires one to approach a document systematically, demarcate all its components and make the necessary edits. Following the narrative, the steps mentioned below have been arranged to enable scholars to edit their research papers with relatively greater efficiency.

1. Reviewing the research paper outline

Before initiating the editing process, scholars should re-examine the layout of their research papers. Doing so allows them to determine the number of sections in their documents and the contents of each section.

This step is necessary to ensure that scholars get a holistic view of the research paper.

A preferable method to review the outline of a document is to draw it separately along with some notes on what each chapter comprises.

2. Choosing an editing approach

The next step in the process is for scholars to decide how they want to edit a document. Or, to be more precise, which tools they want to use for editing purposes. There are primarily two methods of editing - computer-based and paper-based.

The former method requires scholars to use credible word-processors, such as Microsoft Word and open office, to edit their documents. It is currently a preferred method among academics due to the numerous advantages it offers. Some of these include grammatical suggestions, a thesaurus for synonyms/antonyms, and readily available  citation styles .

The latter method is a more traditional approach, requiring scholars to use rulers and colored pens to make the edits. And though it seems outdated to the tech-savvy individuals, it has its fans and admirers. A major advantage of the paper-based method is that it offers increased intimacy with the document. This allows scholars to examine their documents more closely (in a literal sense) than the computer-based method.

3. Deciding on the starting point

Once a copy of the outline is ready, and the editing method is decided, the next step is to determine a starting point for the editing process.

Scholars should assess which section of their research paper will require how much time and resources. To do so, they should take into consideration the complexity or length, or both, of each section. Subsequently, they should create a priority list and use it to schedule the editing process.

This step is crucial as it enables scholars to deal with the most problematic components of their documents first.

4. Making the edits

After the preparations are complete, it is time for scholars to edit their research papers meticulously and earnestly.

Under this step, scholars should check their documents for the following:

grammatical errors

contextual errors

tonal inconsistencies

factual contentions

weakness of their arguments

clarity of their observations and result

appropriate usage of words and their synonyms

After running the above checks, scholars should proofread the edited document to correct any previously overlooked mistakes.

5. Verifying compatibility with established guidelines

Citations are essential for any academic document as they vouch for the credibility of its contents. They also work toward eliminating any traces of unintentional plagiarism from the document. Thus, scholars should ensure that all the citations - in-text and bibliographic - are in order, including the citation style(s). In addition to citations, scholars should verify the formatting guidelines - generic or as issued by the college/university.

How to edit a research paper: Synopsis

A research paper delineates the research conducted by scholars in their respective disciplines to either support an argument or answer an existing question. It is an academic document that occupies a significant position in the curriculum of college students and research candidates. Therefore, knowing how to edit a research paper is a skill that every scholar should strive to acquire.

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You can also avail of our assistance if you are looking for editors who can format your manuscript, or just check on the  particular styles  for the formatting task as per the guidelines provided to you, e.g.,  APA,  MLA, or Chicago/Turabian styles. Best Edit & Proof editors and proofreaders provide all sorts of academic writing help, including editing and proofreading services, using our user-friendly website, and a streamlined ordering process.

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This brief guide  shows you how to edit a research paper in 5 simple steps. To give you an opportunity to practice proofreading, we have left a few spelling, punctuation, or grammatical errors in the text. See if you can spot them! If you spot the errors correctly, you will be entitled to a 10% discount.

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For anyone in the writing field, editing and proofreading are essential parts of the writing process that you just can’t skip over. To give you more clarity, these two services help make your work better. Be it from small grammatical errors to give structural improvisation, editing and proofreading is the trick to turn your piece from average to excellent. With that in mind, today, we will go through everything that you need to learn about editing and proofreading — what they are, the basic difference, and lastly, why they are important.

For academic achievement, staying ahead of the pack is always a crucial issue. Taking advantage of professional academic editing and proofreading can help you reach your potential and increase chances of your work being published in professional journals. It requires a broad-ranging comprehension to fix a document exceptionally. Therefore, academic editing and proofreading are a critical part of the writing process.

The benefits of leveraging the services of a dissertation editor are far and wide. They augment the quality of a dissertation by a significant margin, are reliable, and take from scholars the stress of editing. But, when it comes to choosing the right editor(s), the process can prove difficult and complex. Hence, to hire excellent editors for their purpose(s) without wasting much time, scholars should observe the aforementioned tips meticulously.

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Editing, Proofreading, and Revision

As student authors, we are typically asked to revise, edit, and proofread our writing assignments. Although these terms are sometimes used inter-changeably, there are some subtle differences. 

The resources on this page will help you understand the differences between these important stages in writing. 

1. Revising: In a sense, every time you open a document and continue working on it, you are in the process of revising it. Thus, there a number of revisions made during every writing project (or at least there should be). We always want to leave ample time to make numerous revisions to our work.  Revisions should occur after you submit a project to a professor and/or peer advisor for review and receive feedback.  Revising includes changing the structure of an essay, adding more research when necessary, and even making cuts to a project when sections are off-topic. Revising includes large-scale changes to a project. 

2. Editing: An editor--whether a peer or someone working at a publication--typically suggests changes that an author should make. This stage is quite similar to revision, but whereas revision can occur during multiple stages of writing, you don't typically edit something until you have a full draft complete. Again, editing may include substantial changes to a project (not small typos, but large structural changes). 

3. Proofreading: The term proofreading suggests that a writer has fine-tuned the organization, structure, and major discussion present in the writing project and is now reviewing the essay for very small errors such as missing punctuation, incorrect spelling or poor choices in punctuation. Proofreading is typically the  final stage of the writing process and occurs before a project is submitted. This means the essay is essentially complete with the exception of needing a few small changes.

PRO-TIP: Always allow ample time for proofreading. It is very helpful to finish a writing project, step away from it, and come back to review it the next day. Editors call this putting a fresh set of eyes on the project, and it helps. Beginning the proofreading process too close to  when the project is submitted is never a good idea. 

In life, there are times when you wish you could have "do-overs."  Writing provides that opportunity. Please keep the following ideas in mind:

• The first draft is not the final draft.
• Many view writing as a continual process, one that sometimes is recursive as opposed to linear.
• You may go back and change a sentence or a paragraph when you have written only a page. 
• You may find yourself deleting full paragraphs or pages once you have completed a draft, going back to change the content or organization. 
• You may discover you have written sections of your essay that are off topic. If so, remove these from your essay, and copy and paste them into a new document. You may be able to use this "off-topic" idea in the future for a different writing assignment. 
• Most writing professional writing projects include numerous rounds of editing and revision. Engaging in revision will prepare you for work in the professional world. 

Revising for Cohesion

Steps for Revising Your Paper

Revising for Concision

Spelling and Grammar Check

Editing and proofreading.

Here are some handy resources to lead you through editing and proofreading your essay.

• As the process of revising nears an end, and you are happy with the content, organization, and unity of your essay, you want to begin proofreading. 
• Read your writing closely, or possibly have others read your writing, to ensure that English usage issues including grammar, spelling, and punctuation are resolved.
• Many writers find it helpful to read their paper out loud. This helps to discover errors and mistakes. Microsoft Word and other word processing programs also feature a READ ALOUD function. This can be an incredibly helpful mode of reviewing your work.
• Print out a hard copy of your writing project so you can look for errors and make notations. 
• Share your project with a friend, classmate, or family member.
• Become familiar with the type of grammar errors you frequently make. Research what these errors are and how to remedy them.
• Some instructors suggest you re-read your essay from the last page to the first, arguing that reading the essay out of order will provide new insights. 
• Though the professional tutors are baker.mywcoline.com are not proof-readers, they can provide meaningful and helpful ideas for revision.
• As you proofread, review the assignment directions as well as rubric to make sure you have not forgotten any important components. 

Finding Common Errors

Proofreading to Eliminate First and Second Person Pronouns

Many students ask if it is acceptable to use first-person phrases in their scholarly writing projects. This includes using phrases such as "I think," "I believe," or "I found an article that says..." and so on. 

• Though the use of such first-person phrasing is not grammatically incorrect, it is not necessary and does not follow the tone or generic rules of academic writing.
• Most of the time, such a phrase can be eliminated from a sentence and it will not impact the meaning. Consider these two examples. 

1. I find that time management is an issue many students struggle with. 

2. Time management is an issue that many students struggle with. 

• You can see that removing this first person phrase does not impact the meaning. The essay or writing project has your name on it, so it is clear that the ideas in it are yours!
• We also do not include first person phrases about how we discovered a source or article. This is not proper for the genre. (Again, it is implied that you found the research. You do not need extra wording to explain how or when this occurred). 

Many times during conversations, speakers will use the word "you" as a subject, when in fact, they are referring to large group of people, or perhaps, herself or himself. Though the use of the word you in scholarly writing is not grammatically incorrect, it is also not an acceptable to use "you" as a subject when writing an essay or other formal writing project.

• Using "you" indicates that the author can see into the mind of the reader(s) and that is not possible. The use of "you" also makes assumptions about the readers. 
• Typically, it is quite easy to change the second-person subject to a more neutral third-person subject like people, students, etc. See the following examples:

1. When you skip classes in high school you can really damage your grade.

2. When students skip classes in high school it can damage their grade. 

• Taking out the second person pronoun you and replacing it does not impact the meaning. 
• For more information on removing "you" from scholarly writing, see the link below.

Removing "You" From Scholarly Writing

This source includes a variety of videos and resources about removing the second person from scholarly writing.

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Let an expert edit and format your paper in apa style.

Scribbr’s experienced APA experts are here to help you with proofreading your text, formatting your document, and correctly citing your sources in APA Style.

• Proofreading & Editing
• APA editing services

Personalized editing with human expertise

Revisions within 12 hours, 100% happiness or a refund or re-edit.

APA Proofreading & Editing

Get your paper back, free of language errors and inconsistencies.

An experienced  editor  gives feedback on consistency, tone, and bias-free language, and directly improves things like:

• Spelling and grammar
• Punctuation and abbreviations
• Capitalization
• Sentence structure

You can rest assured that, when using our APA Editing Service , your text follows APA standards and the conventions of your field.

Add-on services

Customize your apa editing package to get the help you need, apa citation editing, apa paper formatting, structure check, clarity check.

ensures your in-text citations and references are correctly formatted according to APA style and cross-checked.

Your citation expert will:

• Format your reference page (margins, indents, spacing)
• Edit citations and references to your APA style requirements
• Provide feedback on incomplete citations and references
• Cross-check citations with references for inconsistencies

Citation Editing costs $2.75 per source and can be purchased separately or in combination with Proofreading & Editing .

Note that this service can also be purchased standalone.

Ensures a professional look for your document that meets your formatting requirements.

Your formatting expert will ensure consistency for the following:

• Margins, spacing, and indentation
• Body text and headings
• Page numbers
• Abstract and keywords
• Explanatory footnotes

Choose our Paper Formatting service for a professional finish or our APA Editing Service for the most up-to-date APA formatting.

Ensures sections and chapters are structured and focused and your writing is free of redundancies.

• Through in-text feedback, your editor will help:
• Organize and focus individual chapters and sections
• Eliminate repetitive and redundant information
• Perfect transitions between sentences and paragraphs
• Align titles and headings with the section’s content

You’ll also receive a personalized Structure Check Report meant to help you identify missing elements in each chapter or section and prioritize improvements.

Ensures ideas are presented clearly, your arguments are consistent, and your audience can follow along.

Through in-text comments and checklists, your editor will:

• Make sure your text tells a clear and logical story
• Check that you’ve clearly presented concepts, ideas, and key terms
• Make sure your key takeaways and conclusions are front and center
• Highlight contradictions within the text
• Ensure you’re keeping your audience’s needs in mind

Get matched with the perfect APA editor - and editing team

When you submit your document to Scribbr, you can rest assured that only the most qualified APA editors and citation and paper formatting experts will work on it.

All our 800+ editors have passed the challenging Scribbr Academy, which has a passing rate of only 2%. We handpick your editor based on several criteria, including editing style, field of study, and document type.

In addition, all of our APA citation and paper formatting experts have completed extensive courses and edit more than 100 citations and format more than 500 pages a week!

Emily - editor

I have a bachelor's in electrical engineering and a master's in psychology and am pursuing a PhD in neuroscience.

Janice - editor

I have a PhD in German studies, an MS in library science, and extensive experience teaching undergraduate students.

Kathrin - formatting expert

I have a bachelor's degree in psychology and am currently pursuing a master's degree in health & medical psychology. I specialize in APA citation editing and paper formatting.

Callum - editor

I am an ESL teacher and academic editor with a research background in the humanities, arts, and culture.

Richa - editor

I have a doctorate in biology and studied a range of life science subjects. I specialize in editing academic texts.

Luuk - formatting expert

I studied European studies and always followed APA style for my papers. I specialize in APA citation editing and paper formatting.

Maximize your paper's potential with APA editing

Same day delivery

This deadline works automatically for the following document sizes:

• 3 hours: less than 3,000 words
• 6 hours: less than 6,000 words
• 12 hours: less than 12,000 words

Select your currency

Fantastic service!!

“Excellent review of a paper that was deciding my grade. I appreciate both the edits and the feedback to increase my knowledge of correct APA formatting and accurate citations. I needed the paper returned quickly, and the team worked hard to make sure I had what I needed. I just got my grade back, A+. I would 100% use this service again, it was worth every penny!!!!!!”

How it works

Stay in control throughout the paper editing process, upload any time.

Upload your document and easily select the pages that need editing. Next, choose your turnaround time and services and explain your situation and needs to the editor.

Stay in the loop

After placing your order you can keep track of our progress. From finding your perfect editor to potential hand-overs to formatting or citation experts.

Revise and submit

You’ll receive back your document with tracked changes and feedback as well as a personal letter from your editor. The last step is submitting your work with confidence!

Scribbr & academic integrity

Scribbr is committed to protecting academic integrity. Our proofreading service, our AI writing tools ( plagiarism checker , paraphrasing tool , grammar checker , summarizer,  Citation Generator ) as well as our free Knowledge Base content are designed to help students produce quality academic papers.

We make every effort to prevent our software from being used for fraudulent or manipulative purposes.

Your questions, answered.

Our APA experts default to APA 7 for editing and formatting. For the Citation Editing Service you are able to choose between APA 6 and 7.

The fastest turnaround time is 12 hours.

You can upload your document at any time and choose between four deadlines:

At Scribbr, we promise to make every customer 100% happy with the service we offer. Our philosophy: Your complaint is always justified – no denial, no doubts.

Our customer support team is here to find the solution that helps you the most, whether that’s a free new edit or a refund for the service.

Scribbr specializes in editing study-related documents . We proofread:

• PhD dissertations
• Research proposals
• Personal statements
• Admission essays
• Motivation letters
• Reflection papers
• Journal articles
• Capstone projects

Yes, if your document is longer than 20,000 words, you will get a sample of approximately 2,000 words. This sample edit gives you a first impression of the editor’s editing style and a chance to ask questions and give feedback.

How does the sample edit work?

You will receive the sample edit within 12 hours after placing your order. You then have 24 hours to let us know if you’re happy with the sample or if there’s something you would like the editor to do differently.

Read more about how the sample edit works

Your editor is on stand-by and ready to start editing your paper.

Get in touch, with real people.

We answer your questions quickly and personally from 9:00 to 23:00 CET

• Start live chat
• Email [email protected]
• Call +1 (510) 822-8066
• WhatsApp +31 20 261 6040

Knowledge Base

Finishing your paper with scribbr’s top-rated guides, how to write your paper in apa style, how to cite in apa format, how to format your paper in apa style.

Research paper

How to Write Academic Paragraphs