The first time I had to deliver difficult feedback to a fiction author was on a fantasy manuscript, brimming with imagination but bogged down by clunky prose and plot holes. I spent hours deliberating over how to approach my critique, torn between honouring the...
A future with machines Should we be concerned about a future alongside AI? Does the future hold productivity gains or mass employment? We are only just starting to see how this new technology will affect our particular line of work. As an academic editor, it is...
Writing a thesis is a big deal. It’s the result of months (sometimes years) of research, thinking and hard work; and pulling all that work together into a polished, professional thesis can be tough. That’s where three key players come into the picture – the student,...
The benefits of formatting to editors Formatting “makes it much easier for me to work with the document, it looks professional, and it is much easier for the examiners to navigate” (Richard Steele, in a PEGblog about his take on academic referencing). Many...
A controversial concept I recently came across a social media post that unsettled me. The person who posted claimed that academic writers would benefit from training by popular fiction writers. The poster found the dense academic prose difficult to understand. This...
Taking on editing work for a student’s academic project – whether it’s an essay, dissertation or thesis – is a rewarding but complex task. As editors, our goal is to polish and refine the student’s writing while maintaining their unique voice and upholding academic...
For around only SEK1 500 a year it is possible to subscribe to the artificial intelligence (AI) editing services that some reputable journal publishers offer nowadays. This seems like a brilliant way to save time and money on language editing services. But just how...
Referencing styles have usually been created by an organisation that specialises in a certain tyle of information, and the styles specify: how to arrange items in a reference list, eg in alphabetical or numerical order how to arrange and punctuate the author, title,...
Question Heléne van der Westhuizen asked: Are accurately, precisely and exactly interchangeable and are there context/nuance differences to be mindful of? Answers Oxford Dictionary Our Oxford dictionary defines the words by each other, which is not helpful in this...
First check your style guide and follow that if you can. If the country has changed its name, list its publications under their names as they appear in the source (including any spelling mistakes! But put a [sic] after those) then have a 'see' or ‘see also’...
An American Psychological Association blog has very useful advice about how to cite and keep records of ChatGPT advice. Posted Aug 11, 2024 at 00:10 23 words
After studying and teaching science for 30 years, I thought I knew everything about Système International (SI) units. Turns out I didn’t. Editing has introduced me to a whole new, unsuspected realm of SI idiosyncrasies and conventions. Some fundamentals I edit science...
One of the services an editor offers is checking that all items in the reference list are cited in the text and that all citations in the text are included in the reference list. This can be quite tricky and time-consuming. Several PEG members swear by a macro created...
Substantive editing focuses on the overall structure, content, and flow of a manuscript. When you engage an editor to perform substantive editing, they will make or suggest changes to the title, language, and style. But they will also make or suggest bigger changes to...
The information below comes from a [PEGforum] Editing legal documents thread on Tue 2024/01/16 10:17. Thank you to the PEG member who answered the question but did not want to be named. Question I need some advice on which trustworthy sources I can use to guide me...
In this PEGblog, we explain what a compilation thesis is (often called a thesis by articles or a paper-based thesis/dissertation) and the limited nature and extent of the copy editor’s engagement with it. Compilation thesis: nature and process In Europe in particular,...
Plagiarism on the grand scale has been made more and more tempting and easy for lazy [writers] by people who provide whole essays on all manner of subjects on the web. – Manning Murphy (2019) To understand the nature of plagiarism, it is useful to consider the origin...
I have been a supervisor and an examiner of academic texts but am now an editor of academic texts. I offer my services in academic editing because I want the student’s (and the university’s) efforts to be honoured with a well packaged product. This post explains a...
To me, part of the beauty of a comma is that it offers a rest, like one in music: a break that gives the whole piece of music greater shape, deeper harmony. It allows us to catch our breath (Pico Iyer). This post gives the comma its due regard and highlights its...
We are all familiar with fusty, complicated, roundabout academic writing – no doubt it filled many of the textbooks you struggled through at school and university; and if you have to read academic texts in your working life, you may dread the task because it is such a...