A single misplaced letter in a written document can have a dramatic and detrimental effect on what you are trying to say to interact with the reader. For this reason, proofreading services are essential in checking your written work. Similarly, use of the wrong style, tone, or structure in your essay, journal article, or web content can really irk your readers. In the worst case, it may entirely obscure the argument or point you want to make. As such, editing services are more than often required.
If you have an almost-finished document and you want a fresh pair of eyes to look over it to catch errors and, more generally, to ensure that everything hits the right note, an important decision you need to make is whether to choose a proofreading service or an editing service. As most customers recognise, editing and proofreading services are not the same thing; however, as many do not know, there is a fairly straightforward way to determine which one is the right one for you.
Ask yourself a few questions to help decide:
Have you only written one draft? If so, then chances are that you will need an editing rather than a proofreading service. The reason for this is that, if you are already on your third or fourth draft, your document is already likely to be well-organised and quite pleasant to read. As a result, an editing service will probably be overkill in this case.
- Is English your mother tongue? If you’re second language is English, then – in most cases –an editing service will be right for. For example, international students whose first language is something other than English often struggle to write in a consistent academic style. Therefore, the fact that editing and proofreading services address different things, where style is a central issue for an editor, this makes editing the best choice.
- How valuable would an editor’s advice and guidance be for you? This is trickier question to answer. To help you, remember that, for most editing services, comments are left about why certain changes were made and, moreover, how you can avoid specific mistakes in the future. For this reason, if you are interested in receiving more advice and guidance rather than less advice and guidance, an editing service is likely to be more helpful.
All in all, the key point to emphasise in this article is that editing and proofreading services, despite not being the same, are quite easy to choose between. Combined with the fact that editing is typically more expensive than proofreading, the above mentioned questions will help you to make the correct decision about which service can meet your needs.
Professional Proofreading Services 