The Expert Editor has been editing academic papers, books and business documents since 2012, and we have been writing here since 2013. The blog answers practical questions writers face before and during an edit: What is the difference between copyediting and proofreading? What does a manuscript assessment look at? Which kind of edit does a draft need? We explain these things as we would to a client—plainly, specifically and with the needs of the draft in mind.
Every article is reviewed and approved by our editors before publication. You can read more about how we work in our Editorial Standards.
A common assumption treats simple sentences as a sign of simple thinking, and long, elaborate ones as evidence of a sharper mind behind them. The research on how readers actually judge writing points the other way, and the tools built to measure readability were never designed to reward simplicity ...Read More
A writer reads a manuscript for the fourth time, satisfied it's clean, and sends it off. An editor opens it an hour later and finds six errors on the first page: a doubled "the," a wrong homophone, a sentence missing its verb. Nothing about the writer's care or competence ...Read More
The first draft of a chapter comes out of a writer in a rush some mornings — messy, but moving. Then the second pass arrives, and the same writer sits in front of the same document for an hour and produces four changed sentences. Ask them what happened ...Read More
Most writers who submit manuscripts for editing understand their argument. They know what they want to say. The chapters hold together, the reasoning is sound, the research is there. And yet the prose doesn't work. It resists the reader at every turn — not because the ideas are ...Read More
My wife can finish a novel in an afternoon and tell you exactly how it made her feel. I have never been able to read that way, and after a career spent first teaching and then editing, I have stopped apologising for it. I read slowly, and I ...Read More
When a writer sends a finished manuscript for assessment, they usually expect one of two verdicts: it's ready, or it isn't. What they get back is neither. A manuscript assessment is not a mark out of ten and not a line edit. It is a reader's report — ...Read More