The Sample Edit

We offer a no-obligation sample edit to new clients. To receive this sample, or test, edit, please provide the following:

  • The deadline (ours, not the journal submission deadline)
  • The full paper
  • The style guide or target journal website for the submission guidelines
  • The type of English (British or American)

We must know the deadline to determine which editor can edit your paper. We request the entire paper so that the editor can begin at the beginning and know your paper’s thesis. We would also like to determine the scope of work by looking over the whole manuscript to assess its overall structure. We need to know the total word count to assess the time required to edit your paper and hence, the cost. The editor takes into account the required style guide and the type of English when doing the sample edit, but in some cases will attend to that in the full edit.

Purpose of the Sample Edit

1) To Demonstrate What the Edit Will Look Like: The sample edit shows you what you can expect from the edit. We want to ensure that you accept and approve the edit before we begin.

2) Assessing the Scope of Work: To provide a quote (or determine if the paper is ready for editing), the editor must do a sample edit. When an editor actually edits the text, they read it very closely, on multiple levels and can see things that cannot be seen from a cursory glance. Editors may time themselves during the sample to calculate the amount of time they spend on a page and then extrapolate that to a per-word rate. It can be somewhat difficult to assess structure in the sample as the limited sample often restricts their edit to a line edit. Because we use a sample edit instead of a flat fee, the quote is customized to your paper.

How Much Text We Edit in the Sample Edit

Our sample edit consists of 10 percent, or approximately 500 words of a text over 5,000 words, of the paper you submit. We offer this no-obligation sample edit the first time you submit a document to Oxford Editing. Please submit your entire manuscript for the no-obligation sample edit. The editor needs to see the scope of the work in order to see if the work can be completed within their existing schedule.

Knowing Your Deadline is Important for the Sample Edit

We ask for your deadline at the beginning of the process because the editor who would edit your full paper, if you decide to proceed, is the same editor who does the sample edit. Therefore, the first step in our process is identifying the editor who can meet your deadline. That editor then does the sample edit.

We will assume that that deadline is our deadline, in US time. In planning the turnaround time for the edit, please leave yourself time to revise before you submit your paper.

Time Required for the Sample Edit

We ask for your patience as we look over your paper. Depending on your editor’s schedule, it can take two days (occasionally longer) to do the sample edit. Assessing the cost of the edit requires focus and time, and this assessment must be fit into an editor’s regular schedule.

You can see samples of our proofreading and editing by clicking on the link in the sidebar at right.

When We Cannot Do a Sample Edit

If we determine that we cannot edit your paper for some reason, then we will not do the sample edit. That is, we reserve the right to refuse to do a sample edit based on a variety of criteria.

Style Guides

Editors need to know what the style guide is that your publisher (or university) requests. This information can usually be found in the author submission guidelines of your target journal. Our editors are familiar with the major style manuals, including The Chicago Manual of Style (CMS), Turabian, APA Style (American Psychological Association), The MLA Handbook (Modern Language Association), Harvard, Hart’s Rules (Oxford University Press), The ACS Style Guide (American Chemical Society), AMA Manual of Style (American Medical Association), AP Stylebook (Associated Press), The Blue Book, Oxford University Standard for Citation of Legal Authorities (OSCOLA), and others.

Preferred File Format

We prefer to edit in Microsoft Word because its “Track Changes” feature is robust, clearly showing you all the changes the editor has made to your text. You can the review the edits and “Accept All Changes” after you have rejected changes you do not agree with. The Track Changes feature also provides a means for the editor to annotate and comment in the margin on any potentially significant changes; explain their suggested changes; ascertain that they have understood the meaning should there be any ambiguity in the original wording; or call out or flag a potential problem, such as lack of clarity or the need to add more data.

Editing LaTeX Source Files

If you have written your paper in LaTeX, we can edit the LaTeX source file. However, most of our editors prefer editing in Word. However, one editor is able to edit a LaTeX file directly via Overleaf. The fee for this work is $65 per hour.

When we edit in Word, we suggest that you copy and paste the text from the LaTeX source file into a Word file. (We can also open an .rtf or .txt file in Word. We don’t recommend using a converting program to convert from a .pdf to Word.) After we have returned the edited document to you and you have removed the comments and accepted or rejected the edits, you can do a Save As .txt file and then convert to a .tex file.

Click here send us an email if you have any questions about our services. We would be delighted to answer your questions in writing.

How We Edit

Most writers make unconscious mistakes when they write, and so most writers benefit from having their manuscript edited by a professional editor. If you entrust your document to Oxford Editing, one of our editors will read your text objectively and carefully, considering it as would a first-time reader. The editor will also scrutinize it for style, grammar, punctuation, word choice, and flow. Through the multi-phase editing process that each document goes through, you can expect us to return a document that is clear, concise, and ready-to-publish.

Some of the standard writing elements that our editors consider are such stylistic devices as making the construction of your sentences parallel, structuring your paragraphs in accordance with established writing standards, eliminating unnecessary uses of the passive voice, and omitting needless words. They also repair any faulty grammatical construction and resolve or point out stumbling blocks that can stop your readers. They make sure that you have defined key terms and used them consistently and throughout the paper. This level of detail improves the coherence of your argumentation. They also ensure that the document is free of typographical and grammatical errors and that it follows your identified style guide.

Multi-Phase Editing Process

Editing is usually done on multiple levels. On the line edit level, editors correct grammatical and spelling errors. They will also ensure that your document follows your designated publication style guide. If we think that your paper needs a deeper edit, that is, a substantive or structural edit, the editor first makes the requisite substantive or structural changes, which often require significant commenting. The substantive edit can do such things as eliminate any unnecessary repetitions and expand elliptical explanations. Because they are reading on multiple levels, they might later rethink some initial edits and modify them or remove them as their understanding of the text deepens, making the process somewhat circular (which is why we cannot return the edit piecemeal.

Developmental Editing

When the editor edits your manuscript on a developmental level, they check that your paper flows logical and coherent way and that it conforms to academic writing standards. They look first for a strong thesis statement and then consider the overall structure of the paper, including the structure of each paragraph. They can help you write clear topic sentences for each paragraph, ensure that transitional ideas are in place, check that you have defined key terms and used them consistently, and check that all sections connect logically to the thesis (but to do this, they must begin at the beginning so that they can know your thesis). They can also help less experienced authors develop their papers by suggesting ways to reorder sections of the text to improve logical order and flow of the text, reduce repetition, and ensure that standard features of an academic paper are in place.

Whether your paper requires a light edit or a developmental (very heavy) edit, our editors will work to retain your writing style, tone, voice, and meaning.