It is your duty to be an assertive and informed student. The doctoral road is structured to help you in many ways. Sometimes the help might feel like a hindrance because so many people have a say and they might be unclear, but know that it isn’t. True, there are times when you have to jump through academic hoops to satisfy academic egos, but that is part of the process. Just get over it and get on with the writing process. Don’t let anyone point you in the wrong direction when help is needed. And through all the trials and tribulations, be sure to value and pay for the expertise of a good academic editor.

At times the content road of your doctoral journey is a battle. Equip yourself with knowledge and use whatever help is available. And to get you going, Language Online created a guide for the serious student to equip yourself with some basic self-editing skills. Please be sure to download your own personal copy of the Language Online 21 Proofreading Tips and be sure to use them. At the very least, some should bring a smile to your face.

Click on the cover for to get your tips copy:

Expectations

I think often students are hoping for a content edit when they are paying for a copy edit. Often a student needs a content edit, but only wants a copy edit. So even if you are not writing under ideal circumstances, know yourself and know the process. Know what you should be doing, know who is in the chain of faculty help, know what kind of help you need from an editor, and be prepared to pay for good editing.

What could be less than perfect circumstances?

1. When one chooses a topic, one would expect the process of discovery to be simple. Not so. This is normal, but if in any way you find it problematic, get help.
2. One chooses your academic advisors expecting perfect help. Unlikely.
3. If you are not a great writer, acknowledge that, and find and pay for a good academic editor.

Don’t confuse the two types of editing and don’t expect to get a content edit if paying for a copy edit. But if you are a knowledgeable student who does your share of the work, this is unlikely to happen. And if you need a content edit for part or all of your work, be wise enough to know that and get help. Faculty would be your first option and if that is not available, find a good content editor fast.

Now that you are clear about a copy edit, a look at the content edit.

Content edits

It is of no use polishing a paper if the content is lacking. Well-written nothing is still nothing. So before one can polish a paper, namely the copy edit, one needs to build the content.

So the starting point is the content. The idea is for the author and editor to work the content repeatedly until the thoughts are logical and words flow. Gaps in literature are often the most common content problem, or an unclear thesis, fuzzy questions, loose hypotheses, etc. Once the content has been tightened and honed, then the copy edit process applies. If you cannot manage the content by yourself and there is not enough help from the university, be prepared to pay the expensive rate of a content editor.

Anyone offering to write the paper for you is not an editor. Editors work with already written text. How else can you call the work your own if you did not write it in the first place. Be super careful of anyone who offers to write your work for you.

Almost time to wrap up this series. I’ve spoken much about who is involved in the doctoral process and that the academic editor is one of possibly 8 people. I think a brief recap of what an academic editor can and can’t do is in order.

What is a copy edit and what is a content edit? Lack of clarity can also cause an unsatisfactory experience.

Copy edits

Copy edits mean checking all language and punctuation, making sure the work has an academic tone, that house a style is applied (if provided),  and that the formatting is correct and consistent. While doing all that, an editor will work to keep your writing voice. Not an easy task. The degree of sophistication of the final document depends on three aspects:

1. your level of writing
2. how well and how often you self-edit
3. the number of times you have an academic editor edit your work.

My favorite images when trying to describe how editing works is the onion or the ladder. As you keep peeling the onion layers or climbing the rungs of the ladder, so a piece of writing improves. Someone who writes well to start with and does good self-editing could manage with one edit at the end. They next layer or rung is immediately achievable. Someone who writes poorly, be it poor English or poor academic English, would need at least two edits or more. A first edit would get it reading reasonably. A second edit would ensure that the next layer or rung is possible. And sometimes more is needed.

So there you have a brief look at why editors are sometimes put into a really difficult position. If you never understand what is going wrong from your side, you will always be disappointed with the editing relationship and the editing process.

The solution is simple. Be a take-charge student. Know your role. Know who else needs to be involved, and what to expect from each person. Use a good editor when ready and know what to expect. Equip yourself with basic self-editing skills. Such knowledge will allow you to productively accept good help and ignore pedantic advice. If you haven’t already, download your own handy copy of the Language Online 21 Proofreading Tips. And be sure to read the guide and use the tips.

Go here to request your copy: . http://tinyurl.com/self-editing

Students who expect too much from academic editors: reason 4

The lazy advisor and advisory committee

The very people allocated by the university to help you often expect the editor ‘to fix’ everything. Or worse, they like to shift their responsibility, when they should be helping. Even with all the help available, the doctoral road is seldom linear. There are always bumps in the road, constant rewriting, and delays. Students and faculty know this, and to expect an editor to make the process completely linear is unrealistic. A good editor will smooth the road, but bumps there will be. Simply how the process works.

This is more difficult to work around because it is not strictly speaking in your hands. You may or may not have had a hand in choosing your faculty help. Either way, there are no guarantees the relationship will work. Essentially you need to be an informed and confident student to weather this difficulty. You must know enough to keep to not allow a advisory member to shift work or blame onto an editor. This is a big no-win situation if the editor is the fall person.

I came across this recently and was reminded about the fun I had in the classroom with spoonerisms. Of course, you’d be just fine if you never heard about a spoonerism, but hey, fun is important. At least this brings the odd smile to one’s face.

When I’m tired I tend to fruit salad my words and out comes … spoonerisms

spoonerism \SPOO-nuh-riz-uhm\, noun:

The transposition of usually initial sounds in a pair of words.

Some examples:

• We all know what it is to have a half-warmed fish ["half-formed wish"] inside us.
• A well-boiled icicle ["well-oiled bicycle"].
• It is kisstomary to cuss ["customary to kiss"] the bride.
• Is the bean dizzy ["dean busy"]?
• When the boys come back from France, we’ll have the hags flung out ["flags hung out"]!
• Let me sew you to your sheet ["show you to your seat"].

A little bit of history. Spoonerism comes from the name of the Rev. William Archibald Spooner (1844-1930), a kindly but nervous Anglican clergyman and educationalist. All the above examples were committed by (or attributed to) him.

Students who expect too much from academic editors: reason 3.

The ill-equipped or ill-advised student

Students sometimes just are not aware of the levels of help that the university should extend to them. As academic editors, we see this with campus-based and online students. It is clearly the student’s job to find out exactly who should be doing what to help. But it is equally the faculty’s role, to facilitate the student in understanding who is available to help, what resources the university has on hand, and what to expect.

Not any different to the lazy or insecure student. You must get down to finding out what is available to you. You are not alone in your studies. The school gains as much as you do when you graduate successfully. So make them work for the right to include you in their stats and thus get additional funding and be able to advertise how successful they are at producing graduates.

Students who expect too much from academic editors: reason 2.

The insecure student

If for any reason a student is unsure of his or her content or writing ability, the student desperately looks for someone in the doctoral chain to give reassurance and do the work for him or her. As a student, content is your preserve. You have chosen your topic. You need to refine your topic. Your university faculty team need to assist with the molding of your content. To some extent they can also help with the editing. The tidying of the writing can be improved by a good academic editor. Please note, I said improved, not written by the editor. You provide the goods, the content; the editor will help hone the end product.

Again understanding your responsibility, knowing what is required, and becoming confident with the process will give you the freedom not be a needy student looking for confirmation outside of yourself when you should be focusing within and simply using all the available help as sounding boards.

By now you should have a good idea of what help is available to you as a master’s or doctoral student both from your school and from online services. You should also be clear what is your responsibility. Yet we repeatedly see perfectly intelligent doctoral students expecting academic editors to be miracle workers.

From experience there seem to be a number of reasons. Let me discuss the 4 obvious reasons in the next few blogs. These are not judgments, but rather observations. Most of them are within the power of the student to change if wanting to.

So to get started. Students who expect too much from academic editors: reason 1.

The lazy student

Writing is a dynamic process, ever-changing, and hopefully ever-improving. I find myself saying that over and over because I believe in it so much. A student who just wants a quick fix, as if producing a product rather than dynamic research work, wants someone else to do much of the work. Who better than the academic editor? And when their quick-fix approach backfires, who better to blame than the editor.

The solution for a student is of course to understand your role, the school’s role, and the outside editor’s role and then confusion can never exist.