There are three types of academic editors: developmental, copy, and substantive. Developmental editors work with authors to improve the overall quality of their work, including organization, clarity, grammar, and style. Copy editors focus on grammar, punctuation, spelling, and syntax. Substantive editors check for accuracy in terms of facts and sources.
Most useful textbook and academic posts of the week: March 26, 2021
Has the pandemic life got you bored? Are you seeing a wealth of new challenges to your writing practice or are you exploring new opportunities and remaining curious about what the future (post-pandemic) research and academic environment will look like? Dorothy Parker once said, “The cure for boredom is curiosity. There is no cure for curiosity.”
Strategies for revising and editing
During our last #AcWriChat Tweetchat event on June 12th, we discussed the difference between revision and editing in addition to strategies for completing both of these essential elements of the academic writing process. Chat participants Marc Ouellette and Sonal Mehta added their perspectives to the discussion.
Below is a summary of the ideas and resources presented during the event.
Revision as the road to success
The creation of great content (whether a book, journal article, dissertation, or something else) involves many stages. These stages include: concept creation and formulation, initial research or investigation, the actual research, gathering information and data, outlining the communications, writing the first draft, revising your writing, feedback from others, additional revisions, final checks, submissions, and release or publication. Revising your work might be the most crucial (and overlooked) step in the process.
Some may view it as drudgery. “I did all that research and writing and now I have to check the grammar!”
How to edit your work for proper format and quality presentation
Last week during TAA’s bi-weekly #AcWriChat TweetChat event on Twitter, we discussed how to edit your academic writing for proper format and quality presentation. Included in the discussion were the three common style guides (APA, MLA, and Chicago), common practices and mistakes, and the effect of poor formatting and presentation on credibility of the work. We also discussed how to evaluate flow and what elements of consistency should be evaluated during the editing process.
Distinguishing features of academic writing #5: Accuracy
In our final discussion of this series on distinguishing features of academic writing, we focused on accuracy. Specifically, we considered…