Editing

The goal of editing English is to produce a document that is written clearly and precisely in an elegant style and that contains no errors. The English should be as simple as possible and easy to understand. In order to achieve this goal, we undertake to do the following:

• Correct grammar
• Correct spelling
• Correct punctuation
• Ensure that the correct vocabulary is used
• Ensure that an appropriate level of formality is used
• Improve style

• Alert you to ambiguity in your text and tell you what the different possible ways of intepreting your text are, so that you can choose the formulation that conveys your intended meaning
• Point out unwanted implications of the text that you have written and suggest ways of rewriting
• Point out text the meaning of which is unclear due to a lack of clarity in thinking and, where possible, inform you of what you need to do to remove the unclarity

It will be evident from the above that, in most cases, we will not be able to provide canonical corrections to remove unclarity. We can only point out problems and suggest ways of solving them. That being so, the resolution of the problems will require input from you. After you have provided input by responding to our comments and suggestions, we will need to check your revised version (see below for our checking service.)

* Please note that in the event that a surcharge is applied for editing the English in a paper, it is almost always because the paper is unclear and contains a great deal of ambiguity due to syntactic and/or semantic factors. The greater the unclarity and ambiguity (beyond a certain threshold) the greater the surcharge will be. Therefore, you should do everything possible to minimise the unclarity and ambiguity before you submit your paper to us for editing. This will almost always involve thinking through what you want to argue slowly, step by step, taking into account all cases and possibilities.

We offer editing for both native and non-native speakers. We can use either International or North American spelling conventions, according to your preference.

Checking

This service is provided after an author has revised a paper in response to the corrections, comments, and suggestions that we made during the provision of editing. Sometimes, checking is not required, whereas on other occasions it is strongly recommended. As a rule of thumb, checking is required when the paper contains unclarity that we cannot resolve without further input from the author. Checking will incur a fee that is in accordance with the amount of effort involved. If the checking takes only a few minutes, there will be no charge. Usually, the fee will increase in relation to the amount of unclarity that the original text contained.

Our editing staff

Cambridge Language Consultants is committed to providing a quality service. We employ only highly qualified and experienced native English-speaking editors. All of our editors have the following:

• They all hold a Ph.D. in a mainstream academic discipline.
• They all have experience of writing specific kinds of document to a professional level.
• They all have a proven track record of editing academic documents.
• They are recruited specially from the United Kingdom, the United States, Canada, Australia and New Zealand.
• They have experience of proofreading and editing documents with a wide range of content

How to submit your document for editing

• 12 pt. text
• double-spaced
• saved in either .rtf (rich text format), MS Word or .tex format. If you submit your document in .tex format, please also send a compiled version in .pdf format.
• Please submit your entire document, including figures and figure legends, even if you do not wish us to edit all sections. If you wish us to omit certain sections, please inform us upon submission and highlight those sections. If we do not receive the entire document, we will not edit your paper.

You can send your document to us by using our online submission form. If, for any reason, you experience a problem when using the for, you may send your document by e-mail to editor@camlang.com, provided that you include in your e-mail all the information that is asked for in the form.

How long does it take?

The time taken to edit and deliver a document will be a matter for discussion between the client and Cambridge Language Consultants. Long documents will, obviously, require more time than short ones. In addition, documents that are difficult to edit will take longer than documents that are not so difficult. In general, we will return a document of up to 8000 words within 12-14 days. We are aware that it does not take that amount of time to actually do the editing. However, the fact that our editors are themselves practising and publishing academics, which is an advantage for our clients, also has a disadvantage; the editors have their own schedules and it sometimes takes time to schedule editing.

Procedure

• Cambridge Language Consultants staff will analyse the document and send it to an editor who possesses the required expertise.
• The editor will make changes that include corrections, suggestions, and comments, then send a revised copy to Cambridge Language Consultants.
• Cambridge Language Consultants will calculate the fee and send a copy of the revised version of the document back to you by e-mail, together with an invoice and instructions for payment.
• Upon receipt of a revised version of a manuscript, the author should go through the manuscript carefully to address all changes, suggestions, and comments. If the author does any of the following, the author should return the manuscript to Cambridge Language Consultants for checking after the author has finished revising:
  (i) Choose not to accept changes;
  (ii) Change our corrected text;
  (iii) Introduce new text.
  When authors return their manuscript to Cambridge Language Consultants for checking, they should highlight in yellow (using the Text Highlight function in MS Word) any new text and any text where they did not accept Cambridge Language Consultants' changes or changed Cambridge Language Consultants' corrected text. This checking will incur a fee that is appropriate to the amount of work involved (sometimes nothing, sometimes calculated on the basis of the standard rate). However, it is very important. Sometimes, papers are rejected on the grounds of poor English because authors changed the revised version that we returned to them.