At a basic, language-editing level, we edit your document to ensure that the spelling, punctuation, grammar, sentence structure, and overall style reach the standards expected of an expert native English speaker (British or American, according to your requirements). In addition, we ensure that the section structure, logical flow, and overall content of a manuscript are consistent with standard practices in the scientific literature. Moreover, and most importantly, the expertise of our editors means that we can identify any important gaps and inadequacies in the presentation of scientific information.

One of our most important tasks is providing feedback on the changes we make to a document. Each change essentially falls into one of three categories: (1) a change that we are confident is correct and hence does not need to be individually checked by the client (although we strongly recommend that clients always proofread manuscripts before submitting them for publication); (2) a change that should be checked by the client, which will be signaled by a supporting endnote with a specific comment describing exactly what aspect of the change needs to be checked; and (3) a change that might need to be made but which we are highly uncertain about, and hence is described as a suggested change in the endnote itself, whose inclusion in the manuscript can be decided by the client themselves.

Each endnote contains specific phrasing to clearly indicate which of the above categories a change falls into, with further information about (1) the relative importance of the change and (2) the confidence we have in the accuracy of the change. When we return an edited document to a new client we include a detailed description of the endnotes to ensure that the client will understand each specific endnote.

Editing time

We spend the same amount of time editing each document on a per-word basis. Therefore, for documents that require fewer corrections at the basic language level, we will be able to spend more time analyzing the scientific content so as to reduce the possibility of problems arising during peer review. If the overall editing time is then still lower than expected for a particular job, we reduce the amount of the invoice on a pro rata basis. We guarantee that you will never be overcharged, meaning that if we do spend less time than usual on a job that you send us, the final price will always be reduced accordingly.

Certification letter

We can provide you with a letter providing certification that your document has been edited by a native English speaker. Some journal editors now ask authors to supply this type of certification when they are submitting a manuscript for publication. Please note that we can only supply you with such a certificate if we have edited the entire manuscript.

Examples of our work

We use the standard track-changes facility in Microsoft Word so that you can clearly see the changes we have made. We also add comprehensive endnotes for explaining our editing and also asking you to check any areas of ambiguity. One aim of our endnotes is to provide you with information that could improve your drafts of future documents. Both the tracked changes and endnotes can be viewed in various ways depending on the version of Microsoft Word you use and the options selected. The examples below show one way of displaying the changes for a particular text extract (the topic relates to mechanical friction).