Editing and Proofreading- Meaning, Difference, Writing Process

For anyone in the writing field, editing and proofreading are essential parts of the writing process that you just can’t skip over. To give you more clarity, these two services help make your work better. Be it from small grammatical errors to give structural improvisation, editing and proofreading is the trick to turn your piece from average to excellent. With that in mind, today, we will go through everything that you need to learn about editing and proofreading — what they are, the basic difference, and lastly, why they are important.

22.09.2021

Editing and Proofreading- Meaning, Difference, Writing Process

Are you writing a book or working on an academic paper? Or perhaps you are creating content for your blog or simply writing a research paper for a peer-review journal or a university. Whatever you may be writing, you must have heard someone suggests you should get professional editing and proofreading services for your work. For anyone in the writing field, editing and proofreading are essential parts of the writing process that you just can’t skip over. 

To give you more clarity, these two services help make your work better. Be it from small grammatical errors to give structural improvisation, editing and proofreading is the trick to turn your piece from average to excellent. 

With that in mind, today, we will go through everything that you need to learn about editing and proofreading — what they are, the basic difference, and lastly, why they are important.

Editing and proofreading services

As mentioned earlier, editing and proofreading are essential phases in the writing process. They help you make your piece better by improving and editing it with various factors in mind. If you were to look into the writing process, you first write your work (which in itself includes stages of its own), and then you edit it multiple times till you feel satisfied with the result. Once you have done that, just before you send it for publication or submission, you conduct the final proofreading to make sure your work is neat and flawless.

Differences between editing and proofreading services

Sometimes, students and scholars use editing and proofreading terms interchangeably. However, that is not right as in the professional field; they are completely two different things. To have a better understanding of it, see it in this way — proofreading is part of the editing process and is conducted at the very end of the writing process.

Let us dive a little deeper into the matter. Editing is making significant changes to the content, which may involve the following:

  • Change in structure

  • Change in the content or revising the writing style

  • Editing the relevance of the content to the topic

  • Checking the tone, language, and approach the content has with the target audience in mind

  • Ensures that the content is clear and precise in what it wants to convey

  • Checks the overall quality of the work 

While on the other hand, proofreading concerns the following things:

  • Looks out for spelling errors

  • Eliminates grammatical errors, including punctuation marks and incorrect use of words

  • Checks the consistency of word usage

  • Checks for errors in formatting 

Editing and proofreading services and difference

So, from the above, you can understand that editing is more in-depth. This is the reason why editing takes a little bit longer than proofreading. In some cases, you need to edit content more than once. Proofreading, on the other hand, is simply looking for small mistakes and errors so that the content has a good finishing touch.

Importance of editing and proofreading services

Now that we understand what editing and proofreading are and how they are different from one another, we shall now try to understand why they are so needed. As mentioned repeatedly in this article, editing and proofreading help make your work better. 

When you are writing content, you have a basic idea of what you want to write. Hence, once you have written it out, if you read it, you will see that there are tons of mistakes there — both structure and grammatical-wise. 

When you edit and proofread, you are essentially taking that rough patch of work and giving it a proper shape so that you are clear to your readers about what you want to say. It increases the overall quality of your work, refining it, making it clearer and more relevant so that your readers have a good experience reading and perceiving it. 

Though editing and proofreading are so important, not everyone can do it perfectly from the very beginning. This is the reason why many rely on professional editing and proofreading services. The reason why you may do that is that these individuals have great knowledge and experience in this field.

Some editing and proofreading tips

It’s time to wrap up, and we will do so by leaving behind a few tips and tricks. You can try these tips the next time you edit or proofread, and we shall assure you, we will not disappoint you.

  • Do not immediately start editing your work after you have finished writing it. Put some distance and come back when you have refreshed your mind.

  • When proofreading, try changing the font, font size, or color of the font. It will help your mind to focus better on the words that you have written.

  • Do not edit and proofread all in one go, especially if your content is long. Do it in short blocks by dividing up your work.

If you need us to make your manuscript shine, contact us unhesitatingly!

Best Edit & Proof expert editors and proofreaders focus on offering manuscripts with proper tone, content, and style of academic writing, and also provide an upscale editing and proofreading service for you. If you consider our pieces of advice, you will witness a notable increase in the chance for your research manuscript to be accepted by the publishers. We work together as an academic writing style guide by bestowing subject-area editing and proofreading around several categorized writing styles. With the group of our expert editors, you will always find us all set to help you identify the tone and style that your manuscript needs to get a nod from the publishers.

English manuscript formatting service

You can also avail of our assistance if you are looking for editors who can format your manuscript, or just check on the particular styles for the formatting task as per the guidelines provided to you, e.g., APA, MLA, or Chicago/Turabian styles. Best Edit & Proof editors and proofreaders provide all sorts of academic writing help, including editing and proofreading services, using our user-friendly website, and a streamlined ordering process.

Get a free quote for editing and proofreading now!

Visit our order page if you want our subject-area editors or language experts to work on your manuscript to improve its tone and style and give it a perfect academic tone and style through proper editing and proofreading. The process of submitting a paper is very easy and quick. Click here to find out how it works.

Our pricing is based on the type of service you avail of here, be it editing or proofreading. We charge on the basis of the word count of your manuscript that you submit for editing and proofreading and the turnaround time it takes to get it done. If you want to get an instant price quote for your project, copy and paste your document or enter your word count into our pricing calculator.

Editing and proofreading services

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This article explains editing and proofreading services, the differences between these services, and the importance of the editing and proofreading services. To give you an opportunity to practice proofreading, we have left a few spelling, punctuation, or grammatical errors in the text. See if you can spot them! If you spot the errors correctly, you will be entitled to a 10% discount.

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