Professional Proofreading Services

Editing your work as an international applicant to a UK university

English-speaking countries are the most popular destinations for international students, both at the undergraduate and postgraduate levels. Due to the growing demand for proofreading and editing services among international students completing courses at UK and US universities, it will be useful to explain what applicants also can do – based on the advice of strong editors – to strengthen and support their chances of entering the leading institutions.

The first consideration for an international student who is interested in applying to a UK university is to understand the higher education system, at least at a basic level. In the UK, the higher education application system is known as UCAS. The UCAS official website contains information and guidance for international students (e.g., depending on their country of residence). It provides up-to-date information about the minimum qualifications you need to enter specific courses, application deadlines, and data on fees and sources of funding. When you research into the many universities and courses available abroad, it is important to keep clear, ordered notes, editing your work to search in a systematic way.

Image: Visiting the UCAS website is important when applying to UK universities

Learning about the reputation of your targeted course and university is another important consideration for international students to pay attention to. At the same time, your preference for whether you would like to attend a central campus university rather than a more distributed campus university is also worth considering when you make your application. As mentioned above, websites such as UCAS are valuable sources for international students, but visiting your chosen university’s official website, along with university and course reputation ranking websites, is useful. As before, creating neatly edited and formatted notes throughout this process, potentially by working with an experienced English editor, writer, or proofreader, can improve your chances of success.

The process of submitting your application to a UK university will involve preparing and writing documents such as your personal statement and CV. Proofreading and editing your work at this point is especially vital, given that mistakes in your spelling, grammar, or manner of expression can undermine your chances of success. In your personal statement, for example, concise writing is important, but it not always easy to achieve. Another key benefit of proofreading services is that they remove the risk of undermining the authority and credibility of your written work through hard-to-spot errors and language mistakes. For this reason, editing your work as an international applicant to a UK university is fundamental.

The CV you write for your university application may also be helpful for future employment resumes.

Altogether, the benefits of proofreading and editing your writing when you are applying to study at a UK university as an international student are considerable. Whether you are seeking a position on an undergraduate or postgraduate course, it is clear that editing and revising your application documents – ideally with the help of an experienced proofreader or editor – can significantly improve your standing for your target position.

Advantages of proofreading and concise writing in scientific papers

Proofreading services offer many advantages when you are trying to write concisely. Writing concisely is worthwhile in all types of writing, but it is especially useful in scientific papers. For example, it promotes readability, it helps you to conserve your word count, and it streamlines the communication of your results and findings. Reporting clearly and accurately on empirical results is especially critical in fields such as healthcare, mathematics, and computing. Ordering a proofreading service can help you benefit affordably from the advantages of concise writing, improving the quality of your research process overall.

Writing a scientific abstract for your research paper is an area where it is well-known that concision is vital. Every available opportunity in open-access and traditional journal publishing will require you to have an abstract to submit your research paper. Working with a trained proofreader or editor can help you to remove redundant pieces of text from your writing, summarising your document in the best way. When you write alone and submit your article for peer-review before anyone else has seen it, the proofreading and editing process can be error-prone. For example, deleting or re-phrasing passages, as well as thoroughly re-reading your work, as a scientist or researcher is time-consuming, and working with a professional can help refine your written work.

Given the great advantages of proofreading in enabling concise writing for academic documents, it is meaningful to consider how concise writing can be achieved. Ruthless editing is essential, and repetition is the first target issue that an editor will work to eliminate. For example, it is common for authors and co-authors working on a scientific manuscript to repeat descriptions of similar material or data in different parts of their document (e.g., statement of results in the abstract, introduction, results, and discussion sections of a standard scientific paper). Acronyms and abbreviations, which are useful to increase concision, should be used cautiously, however, since they often appear inconsistently in co-authored papers or large manuscripts, such as dissertations.

Aside from English language editing and using general proofreading services, other strategies for increasing concision in academic and scientific papers are available. Deleting redundant pairs (e.g., “each and every”) can promote concision.Therefore, finding opportunities to delete any instances of redundant pairs is worthwhile. The deletion of unnecessary qualifiers (e.g., “very”, “rather”, or “really”) should also be considered. To improve concise writing, there are also opportunities to replace entire phrases with words, which should be paid close attention to. Consider the phrase “Due to the fact that …”, which is verbose compared to the similar (or equivalent) words “since”, “given that”, and so on. Hundreds of words might be saved from a document of around 10,000 words by applying the above techniques.

In almost every case, concise writing is easier and more enjoyable to read compared to verbose writing. Furthermore, it helps you to communicate your scientific results and findings in academic manuscripts. Therefore, when you request a proofreading service from a professional, focusing on the issue of writing concisely will help your chances of publication. Using the techniques outlined in this article can also help you promote concision in your own writing technique.

What’s the point of proofreading?

Proofreading services are easy to find on the Internet today, and they are also relatively affordable. If you are a student, an academic, or a businessperson, it is likely that you will have already used a proofreading service, especially if you take pride in your work. However, for those of you who have not used this kind of service before, this article explains the point of proofreading, and shows why expert proofreaders can give your written work the best chance of presentational success.

The basic point of a proofreading service is to find mistakes in punctuation, spelling, and grammar throughout your document, and to correct these mistakes. For example, if you make errors in numbering, capitalisation, or sentence structure in your document, a professional proofreader is trained to spot these, and to make the necessary changes to resolve them.

Image: Proofreading – Simple is better than complex

A common misconception, and one that often leads to customers being dissatisfied with the proofreading services they receive, is that these services cover issues such as formatting, style, and structure. As a case in point, some researchers, before submitting their journal articles for peer review and publication, ask proofreaders to check over their work, expecting that they will format the document consistently for them, optimise their style or concision, and – in all sorts of ways – make their writing easier to read and more attractive to look at. Crucially, this is not the point of proofreading. As emphasised, proofreading focuses on surface errors, not on other deeper content issues.

So, the point of proofreading – despite what many others on the Internet will claim – is to add a final polish to a piece of writing, ensuring it is free from various kinds of mistakes. This is reflected in the definition offered by the Oxford Learner’s Dictionary of Academic English, where the term “proofread” is defined as the process of “reading and correcting a piece of written or printed work”. By contrast, editing, which is frequently confused with proofreading, is a more comprehensive process. Editors do all sorts of things that proofreaders do not. For example, editors may add or remove unnecessary content from your document, and they usually focus on issues such as your writing style or your concision (i.e., did you use way too many words to express something quite simple?).

Image: Proofreading helps you to add a professional polish to your written work

While the point of proofreading is fairly restricted, as this article has shown, having a proofreader look over your document – or checking your document yourself, if you are a strong proofreader – is vital for high-quality writing. In a sense, the point of proofreading is to improve the impact of your document, ensuring that pesky language errors, or embarrassing typos, do not impede the reader’s understanding of what you are trying to say. It’s also worth remembering that no matter how good a writer you are, creating a perfect piece of text without checking what you have written is difficult. For this reason, proofreading occupies an essential place in every writer’s toolkit.

The role of proofreading services when self-publishing a book

For new book writers, and even for experienced book writers, the question of whether to pursue the route of traditional publishing or to go down the self-publishing route is an important one to think about. In many ways, this question is just as crucial as the question of whether to use UK book proofreading services, or to hire somebody to provide editing and proofreading services for your manuscript. The purpose of this article is to explain what the main features of book self-publishing are, and to outline the possible uses of proofreading and editing in book self-publishing.

In contrast to traditional publishing, the proofreading and editing process in book self-publishing is left almost entirely to the author, as well as the professionals that they recruit for assistance (e.g., freelance editors or proofreaders, or any experts who work in companies dedicated to providing these types of services). Traditional publishing generally involves securing a book deal with a publisher and, once this has been achieved, collaborating with the publisher and their in-house editors to refine the manuscript. Another feature of traditional publishing is that distribution and marketing will be overseen and managed almost entirely by the publisher who offers the author a book deal.

Self-publishing has become popular in the age of Amazon, the Kindle, and – more generally – the evolving digital economy, but there are clear disadvantages to not having the support of a publisher. Of course, there are advantages, including the greater level of control that the self-published author exerts over all aspects of the process. However, if the process of self-publication is not managed systematically, and if the author who decides to go this route does not seek assistance when it is necessary, this can, in the worst case scenario, undermine the books chance of publication.

An important consideration for book authors who decide to self-publish is the issue of finances. If you strike a deal with a traditional publisher, then they are likely to cover the cost of cover design, editing and proofreading services, and marketing and distribution. However, the publisher recoups these costs after your book hits the physical and online stores, where – in most cases – authors tend to receive only around 10% of the royalties their books generate. The author will retain all royalties in self-publishing, but they themselves will need to invest in all of the pre-publication activities, including hiring book proofreading services in the UK.

The advantages of both of these routes to book publication – is that, traditional publishing and self-publishing – differ considerably, as this article has shown. So too understand the disadvantages between both of these two routes in book self-publishing. However, finding a strong editor or proofreader to help you finalise your manuscript, without ceding creative control, is a key advantage, and one that often makes the difference.

Proofreading your article for open access publication

When you submit your research article for publication in a journal, whether it is a traditional journal or an open access journal, you will have to go through the process of peer review. In this process, other professionals in your field will determine whether your article is a good fit for the journal and worthy of publication. Although peer reviewers, as knowledgeable professionals, focus on all aspects of your manuscript, the quality of your written English is something they will consider, which highlights the usefulness of professional proofreading services.

Professional proofreading has a long history, and there is evidence that even some of the most widely-celebrated writers in the English language rely heavily on proofreaders to help improve their work. For this reason, if you are an academic whose aim and specialty is to advance knowledge in your area of expertise, collaborating with a proofreader can allow you to make much more significant progress than you would be able to do alone.

Image: Proofreading goes hand-in-hand with scientific research

There are all sorts of reasons why some researchers favour open access publication compared to traditional journal publication. One of these reasons is visibility, where – if an academic publishes their research in an open access journal – it is much more likely to be seen by others compared to the traditional route. A great deal of evidence has also been emerging which shows that, since educators and the general public do not need to pay hefty fees to read open access publications, the potential audience for a research article is vastly greater in the open access route compared to the traditional route. Therefore, with more eyes looking at your writing and your research, the importance of ensuring it is properly proofread, ideally by using professional proofreading services, is clear.

It is also well-known that many professional researchers, even those who earn high salaries due to their prestige, favour open access publication compared to the traditional route due to the lower cost associated with this pathway. When you publish an article with a traditional journal, you are likely to be charged for each page, and these varying charges per page tends to range from £50-200! Even for short articles, these rates can lead to incredibly steep costs. By contrast, open access journals tend not to charge per page, and instead charge researchers a flat rate known as “article processing fee”. Depending on the journal size, this fee may range from £5 to £5,000, and while the cost can still be steep, it is – on the whole – significantly cheaper. With the savings of open access publishing, therefore, opportunities exist to recruit collaborators, and even professional proofreaders.

Image: The lower cost of open access publishing leaves opportunities for proofreading

Proofreading Services – Proofressor.co.uk

Speed is the final commonly-cited reason why many researchers are increasingly favouring open access publishing over traditional journal publishing. Given that professional proofreading frees up researchers to focus on other crucial aspects of their work, including the technical content of their article or any other research initiatives they are participating in, recruiting the services of qualified and experienced proofreader can speed up their work even more. For these reasons, proofreading research articles is an excellent option that goes hand-in-hand with open access publication.

Professional proofreading services in London, UK

London is well-known for many great writers who have visited or lived in the city over the centuries. However, few people recognise today how this great city continues to serve as a place of residence for many excellent writers, poets, and even proofreaders, editors, and rewriters, who offer professional proofreading services, as well as clear advantages in proofreading and editing.

You might ask: Why seek out professional proofreading services in London, as opposed to any other place? Aren’t there many other English-speaking countries with high-quality offerings in terms of proofreading and editing? For example, the U.S.A. is home to countless well-known universities, including Harvard Law School, which is world-famous for the careful, rational, and thorough legal minds it nurtures and produces.

Indeed, London has no monopoly on careful, comprehensive, and thorough proofreading and editing services. These are available in many countries and cities around the world, including the United States and other major cities in the United Kingdom, such as Leeds, Nottingham, or Oxford. Take Oxford, home of the famous poet Edward de Vere and the majestic, millennium-old University of Oxford: many expert providers of professional proofreading services live and work there, too.

However, although there are excellent services to be had elsewhere, London is a good place to start looking for an experienced proofreader for several reasons. Firstly, if a proofreading company has an office in London, then this suggests that it is well-established and reputable (don’t be caught out though – these features don’t always ensure comprehensive or careful editors or proofreaders). In addition, as English-speaking London is one of the largest business and financial centres in the world, that is why many talented English speakers, writers, and communicators decide to congregate and live this vibrant city.

In today’s London, the services of high-quality editors and proofreaders are readily available, thanks in part to the Internet. Even if you yourself do not live in London, you can communicate with and order services from professionals who do. If you decide to work with companies like Proofessor.co.uk, you can schedule WhatsApp video chats or Skype calls with your proofreaders and editors, which may make you feel like you are actually are in a London-based office. At the same time, even though London is one of world’s most expensive cities to live in, the services offered by writing professionals who work in the city are often very affordable, because of the competitiveness of these offered services.

The most regular clients for London-based editors and proofreaders, especially given the trend of business internationalisation in recent years, include marketers, content creators, established companies, and students from other parts of the world. For example, a great many of the technology companies that are well-established in Southeast Asia, China, and even South America have, over the past decade, been leveraging recently-signed international trade agreements to market their products overseas (e.g., Chinese firms newly entering the UK marketplace). As a result, vast numbers of product descriptions, press releases, and other business communications are needed by these organisations, all of which must be written effectively in the English language.

Altogether, if you ensure that you avoid unreliable service providers when you are looking to hire a London-based proofreader, then you are likely to receive an excellent piece of written work. Pay attention to receiving free samples before purchasing services, check for reviews, and don’t be afraid of asking your proofreader or editor tough questions to check their eligibility.

Fast, affordable, and quality proofreading services by Proofessor.co.uk

Whether you require proofreading services for an upcoming speech you are giving, or whether you want to use book proofreading services in the UK to add a professional polish to your short story, poetry collection, or e-book, Proofessor.co.uk should be one of the first service providers you think about working with.

One of the defining features of the available proofreading services is that they are priced on a per word basis. This allows you to ensure that the price you pay for any service is personalised and tailored to your specific document. For example, if your document contains 5,000 words, you will pay the proofreader to check over exactly this amount of work.

Notably, this pricing policy contrasts with several of the policies offered by other service providers. As a case in point, certain providers of proofreading services charge customers based on an hourly rate, which – although convenient, conventional, and easy to understand – often leads to customers paying more than they should. Hence, a key aspect of Proofessor’s approach to pricing is that it leads to one of the most affordable services available out there today.

Another important feature of Proofessor.co.uk’s pricing policy is that there is no minimum order value. Initially, this does not sound impressive, but when one realises that many other service providers only allow customers to work with them if they order a certain number of words (e.g., at least 1,000 words), it becomes clear that this policy appeals to many customers.

For example, if your document is less than 1,000 words (for argument’s sake, let’s say 250 words), certain service providers will still charge you for 1,000 words. Our team’s commitment has been to avoid this from the beginning. Therefore, every day at Proofessor.co.uk, small documents – ranging from poems and short stories to blogs, press releases, and grant proposals – are rapidly completed and returned.

If you are ordering book proofreading services UK, then this feature is not likely to appeal to you. This is because, in almost all cases, books are significantly longer than the minimum order values that most service providers in this space specify. It is also worth noting that, if you have an extremely short document (e.g., less than 250 words), many service providers – including ourselves will proofread the work for free. This offer tends only to apply first-time customers, but it is a valuable one that you should leverage if at all possible.

Altogether, for book proofreading services UK, or if you only want to hire a proofreader for a shorter piece of work, Proofessor.co.uk offers high-quality and affordable services with a quick turnaround time. Our customers range from businesses to students to authors to academics to professionals – so, whoever you are, and whatever your writing needs are, consider working with a leading company with an experienced team.

Academic proofreading and editing services in London, UK

Strong academic work is comprehensive, coherent, and careful. You can use proofreading services, and even proofreading and editing services in combination, to ensure that the manuscript you create to communicate your academic work, and which you use to outline your empirical results, is just as comprehensive, coherent, and careful.

Image: Coherent and clear writing is an essential part of good research

There are key differences between proofreading and editing services, and the major difference relates to the issue of scope. That is to say, proofreading services generally have a narrower scope in comparison to editing services, but the nature of the exact service you receive from the service provider will tend to differ depending on each organisation’s policy.

Proofreading services typically focus on correcting grammar, punctuation, and spelling mistakes in your work. For academic work, for example, a PhD dissertation, in which the strength of the write-up of your results often determines the final grade that you will receive for several years of investigation, empirical research, and careful design, such services are clearly valuable. As a case in point, if pesky errors in basic language issues are plaguing the reader’s precise understanding of what you are attempting to say in your manuscript, then hiring a proofreading expert will help you to resolve these issues.

Image: Neat writing isn’t always good writing – ask your proofreader for advice!

Proofreading and editing services can be used together, but when used alone, editing services are typically concerned with all of the issues that a proofreader would focus on, in addition to issues such as academic tone, maintaining appropriate vocabulary, and promoting the effective structure and clarity of your document as a whole. As such, it is usually more expensive to hire an editor compared to a proofreader, but the value they add to your work, especially if you have not yet reached the stage of your final draft, is likely to be significantly higher.

If you are looking for an editor to help you improve your academic work, whether you are a professional researcher or a student, finding an editor who has a good understanding of your subject area is worthwhile. For proofreading, since the nature of the service is less in-depth compared to editing, it is generally not vital to have a subject matter expert check over your work. However, in the case of editing, since the level of the intervention is significantly deeper compared to proofreading, having someone who knows a lot about your research area can be beneficial.

Image: Proofreading or editing? Make a reasoned decision

Things to know before Hiring a Professional Proofreader

Proofreading and editing services are readily available on today’s Internet, but professional proofreading services are not as easy to find as you would think. This is because it is common for sub-standard proofreaders and editors to work in the space today. As a result, many customers receive poor written documents from the people they hire, and they cannot rely on their proofreaders to solve major mistakes in grammar, formatting, or consistency. Naturally, this undermines confidence, and people become reluctant to use proofreaders, editors, or rewriter’s altogether.

Given that reliable, professional proofreading services, as well as other writing services (e.g., editing), are sometimes difficult to find, this article encourages consumers to be cautious in the hiring process. To ensure that you receive high-quality work, and to ensure that you receive a guarantee from your proofreader that the work they finish will be strong, there are several key things to pay attention to. Therefore, when you’re next hiring someone to work on a mission-critical document, be sure to follow the main tips and things to know outlined in this article.

Before you hire a proofreader or editor, whether a freelancer or someone contracted by an agency or third-party, remember that every proofreading and editing services provider – if they are legitimate – will offer you a free sample. The length of this free sample will vary (e.g., from 100 words to 500 words)depending on factors such as the size of your document, the service, and the service provider’s policy.

Looking at the free samples completed by two or three professionals will help you decide which one to choose. Therefore, be sure to capitalise on this offer, as it is an essential part of the process of hiring someone who has the necessary expertise and experience to assist you. An important point worth bearing in mind is that, if you order too many free samples from too many professionals, the quality of your work will drop significantly (as they say, too many cooks really do spoil the broth).

Many freelancers offer excellent, high-quality proofreading and editing services. However, for some use cases, going with companies that hire proofreaders are a better choice, mainly because these firms vet the professionals they work with. Therefore, if you work with a reputable service provider, then you can rely on them – to a degree – to assign your work to a suitable proofreader (that is, based on a larger pool of candidates).

However, if you choose a freelancer, the risk does exist that they may enter into unreasonable, unscrupulous practices, which could leave you with no third-party or intermediary to resolve the dispute. With these issues in mind, working with freelancers for professional proofreading services is definitely an option you should consider, but the risks should be weighed against the rewards. For some clients interested in working with proofreaders and editors, direct contact with freelancers is often more desirable. In other cases, the usefulness of having a well-established proofreading firm, which draws on a vast team of hundreds of proofreaders, may win out.

Affordable and Quality Rewriting Services in London

Today, written English is everywhere. Rewriting services, which take text and transform the look of it (without affecting the meaning), and proofreading services, which add a final polish to a document, are becoming increasingly in-demand. At the same time, in companies such as proofessor.co.uk, services such as rewriting, which were difficult to find before 2008, but are now readily available?

This rising trend coincides with exponential growth in the need for excellence in written content within marketing, promotions, advertising, academia, research, business, and other areas of the spoken word. For businesspeople, the need for affordable editors and proofreaders has never been higher, especially given the pivotal influence these professionals have on business success.

Fortunately, with the Internet, the affordability of proofreading services, as well as other writing-related services, has risen considerably. This is especially true given that, just by sitting at our keyboards, world-class technical authors and editors can consult with – and provide invaluable advice to – aspiring students, researchers, and businesspeople around the world.

Image: The Internet allows access to high-quality, affordable writing services

Another benefit of the Internet is the ready availability of tools such as Google, Yahoo, and other search engines. Using these search engines, or any other Internet search tool, customers can compare the prices offered by several service providers. It is also possible for clients to check reviews from previous customers at proofreading or rewriting companies, which allows them to vet the quality of the services before buying.

If you are looking for affordable rewriting services, the first important point to note is that – generally speaking – services of this kind are significantly more expensive compared to proofreading and editing. At the same time, the price you are likely to be quoted for this service will tend to vary between service providers. The reason why rewriting is often pricier than proofreading is because it is a more time-consuming and complex service to provide.

It is also worth remembering that, in order to find rewriting services or proofreading services that offer the highest return on investment, it may be worthwhile to get to know the person or company you are working with in advance. For example, it is possible to contact the freelancer or the proofreading company you are working with to ask them to provide a free sample. This can allow you to learn about the quality of their services, their reliability, and their ability to deliver work that satisfies your criteria.

Image: Free samples can help you find the most affordable services