As a college or university student, you doubtless learn to master academic English to improve your papers. It is often different from everyday spoken English and has all kinds of strict rules – some very simple and some incredibly complicated. One secret of productive academic writing will be to edit your own work. It is possibly to understand editing your English by employing the techniques described here. When it is time for the final edit, however, you should also hire a successful academic paper editor for final review of your paper.
Before you even start writing your academic paper in English, get help on your favorite university’s website, or the section of their website page devoted to the academic department for which you are writing. Most schools and universities offer their students recommendations, guidelines, and standards for paper writing. Occasionally, those guidelines are fairly lengthy, yet those people guidelines often remain consistent for long periods of time. Once you gain an in-depth appreciation of those rules, you will most likely be in a good position to write academically.
Skilled paper editors automatically start looking for these problem areas in academic writing beyond the easy to spot grammar and spelling errors: punctuation, paper format, paragraph structure, paper organization, verb tense agreement, commonly confused words and phrases, and transitional phrases. Dangling modifiers and misplaced clauses represent an additional challenging part of English for many university students. An instance of a dangling modifier would be: “Thick and funny, Oscar Wilde enjoyed the book thoroughly.” This sentence might have meant in which the book had several pages and was entertaining, but what it basically suggests is that “thick and funny” refers to Oscar Wilde! Now, your teacher may agree that Wilde would certainly possibly be “funny,” but calling the famous author “thick” surely wouldn’t help make you a good grade.
Your computer system’s or word processing program’s spell and grammar check is really a good starting point to spot the main problem areas described above. On your settings you select the choices which will highlight spelling, grammar, punctuation, and possible word choice errors in your academic paper. Keep in mind, however, that spell check isn’t a replacement for editing. And every now and then, instead of helping it confuses the writer or chooses the wrong correction.
Academic English is well-known (or infamous) for using many different style manuals for formatting and citations. The Internet is a useful resource for whichever style manual you are using. Also, your university may again be useful. Web sites of style manual publishers, which are Chicago (www.chicagomanualofstyle.org/) and APA (www.apastyle.org/), also have helpful sections and Q&A pages that address numerous questions. It may be advisable, depending on how frequently you have to write papers using a certain style manual, to purchase a copy of the latest style guide handbook.
Finally, you may hire a professional paper editor to review and polish your work. This is the easiest and most trustworthy way to guarantee that your academic paper in English is edited to perfection. At FirstEditing.com, our experienced and professional editors can help you to improve your paper!
