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My Editing Checklist

 

 

 

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Below is a list of typical items I review and revise while editing manuscripts.

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MECHANICAL EDITING
This includes following guidelines of a style manual for these items: 
 

  • Punctuation 

  • Spelling 

  • Capitalization 

  • Hyphenation

  • Italicization, underscoring, and boldfaced type

  • Abbreviations, including acronyms and initialisms

  • Quotations

  • Tables and graphs

  • Presentation of numbers and statistics

  • International System of Units

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LANGUAGE EDITING

This involves aligning the language of your manuscript with conventional and idiomatic English. This includes checking the following elements:

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  • Grammar

  • Word choice, including technical nomenclature

  • Style, including making texts more clear, concise, consistent, and coherent

  • Tone, involves ensuring that the word choice of your manuscript is appropriate for your audience and type of manuscript you are writing

  • Rhetorical conventions and organizational structures of scientific manuscripts 

  • Textual and formatting conventions, including font size and type, margins, and spacing, and other typography issues

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CONTENT EDITING

I do a limited amount of content editing and fact checking, depending on whether customers request this. At a minimum, if I see clear irregularities with basic facts and content, I will query the author about these items. This may include the following:

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  • Fact-checking by consulting a primary reference sources or by referencing the related literature 

  • Checking numbers that do not add up or missing data

  • Pointing out issues in reporting statistical data

  • Verifying that what is reported in the body of a paper matches what is reported in the abstract

  • Verifying that your summary of findings of other studies is consistent with the article you are summarizing 

  • Spot check for plagiarism

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CORRELATING PARTS

Correlating parts involves verifying that sections of a manuscript logically and consistently connect. Some items I check include:

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  • Checking for consistency between in-text references to tables and figures and correctly labeling these items

  • Checking description in captions and labelling against content of tables and figures

  • Verifying that all items presented in tables are presented consistently, using the same terminology or units of measure throughout the table

  • Verifying in-text citations and footnotes against references

  • Cross checking table of contents with manuscript

  • Checking alphabetization and other elements of the bibliography and reference list

  • Verifying that all text and numerical data are consistently formatted throughout all tables and figures

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