Academic Essay Editing Tips for Freshmen

Gradually we work on explaining why editing academic essays is an essential step in getting a good grade. Our readers already understand that editing eliminates the most common and also very specific mistakes. In the end, this professional touch gives a new image to the whole essay, and people perceive it in a different way. Here we will share several vital tips on college essay editing for freshmen. If you are a novice to academia, this post will guide you in the right direction towards the first brilliantly edited essay, but first of all let us introduce services from Royal Editing.

Academic Essay Editing From Our Website

Familiarize yourself a quick review of our offer. On this site you can order 4 different services, which are editing per se (the most comprehensive service for improving style, structure and grammar), proofreading (similar to editing, but leaves out the structural facet), revision (changing the document according to specific criteria) and rewriting (for reorganizing words and sentences without affecting the meaning).

For all these services, it is possible to choose a deadline starting from 12 hours and ending with a week. Choose the one to suit your schedule and forget about the essay for this time. When the deadline comes, you will get a notification via e-mail with an invitation to download the document. Editing has never been this easy before!

Quality Editing Requires Time

Now we will dwell specifically on advice for freshmen. It is a popular misconception that planning academic writing activities means roughly estimating how much time is needed for writing only. Second and third-year students do not think so anymore, but for freshmen we want to make a point of it: do not consider the work done simply by getting done with entering the text.

After an essay is presumably ready (although what is actually ready is only a draft), its author has to check the document for mistakes and inconsistencies. Sometimes this job is even tougher than writing itself because it requires more attention to details and analytical skills ( follow this link and learn how to improve analytical skills ).

The only conclusion we want you to make out of this is that an essay writing schedule should include some time on editing too. In the next paragraphs, we will explain how to carry it out.

Always Start With The Structure

This technique is called deduction. The deductive approach, also known as the top-down approach, implies that work starts with general things, and then they gradually narrow down to smaller components. How does it apply to essays? Let’s see.

The first tip from our online paper editor would be to ensure that the paper has three main structural elements: introduction with an outline of the study, the main part with all the ideas being thoroughly explained and conclusion where you put an emphasis on what the study proves. Without this framework, the whole paper will go to the dogs.

Once this is finished, you can move on to amending paragraphs and sentences. Here is how to do it:

  • Establish logical connections between different parts of the essay by means of splitting sentences into paragraphs in a way so that each paragraph focuses on one (and only one) main thought.
  • Do not be too shy in employing transitional words. They will help to achieve coherence in academic texts .
  • Divide bulky sentences that take up more than 3 lines into several concise ones. Readers will thank you for this.
  • Try to make the sentence flow even more harmonic by using synonyms or tautologies (in reasonable quantities of course). This kind of words vividly show that the author continues explaining the same idea as before.

Of course, our services can fix any types of structural mistakes if the task seems impossible without professional assistance. Learn more about this type of services here: https://royalediting.com/structural-mistakes-our-paper-editing-service-can-fix.

Get Rid Of Wordiness

Wordiness kills sense, whereas the goal of academic writing is to give birth to new discoveries. Do you feel the antithesis? Get to know some phrases without which papers are better off:

  • as I mentioned above (it annoys people and suggests they were not attentive enough);
  • of course, surely (too informal);
  • always, never (too categorical);
  • very, extremely (simply meaningless).

Cut down these filler words and substitute them with meaningful expressions. Show facts, numbers and other statistics rather than explain the subject vaguely. This will bring more value to the study.

Check The Terms

Among the most embarrassing things that can occur during editing academic papers, there is a mess-up with terminology. To make the text comprehensible and spare yourself from worrying about specific terms for nothing, you should use a professional dictionary that gives explanations. Choose terms for the paper in accordance with their definitions, and the vocabulary of your texts will always stay top-grade.

If English is not a native language for you, a bilingual dictionary will come in handy too, but do not rely on translation entirely. Many words in English have different meanings depending on the context, so this has to be checked each time, at least during beginner’s times (usually up to a year of college studies).

Finally, for non-native speakers who are willing to polish up their language skills, we already recommended online tools to improve grammar . We know this does not sound like a quick fix, so here are some articles to help you with academic editing while you are busy studying grammar:

Do Not Get Too Emotional

Academic writing does not have to and even should not excite imagination and strike with vivid metaphors. This would be depriving fiction authors of their livelihood. The key words when speaking about academic texts include formality, consistency, logic and expedience. That is why emotional passages are not welcome in an essay.

The same rule applies to emoji. No matter how attached you are to them, it is better to restrict their use to friendly chats only. Read our article on why emoji are inappropriate in college writing: https://royalediting.com/emoji-in-your-essay-why-it-is-inappropriate.

Now here are practical tips on leaving emotions outside a paper:

  • As you, hopefully, understood, all emoji should be deleted without remorse.
  • Do not use exclamation marks if they are not part of a quote.
  • Reduce the number of rhetoric questions.
  • Use as few adjectives and adverbs as it is possible without affecting the sense.
  • Abstain from idioms and colloquialisms.
  • Do not resort to marks of omission.

Make Sure The References And The Formatting Are Right

The Internet bursts with advice on getting essay references right and choosing formatting in accordance with standards. Citations in any kind of writing are the main tool for verifying data. However, you should first determine the style to deal with citations in academia. The most popular of them include:

  • APA style (mainly for social sciences);
  • MLA style (suitable for humanities);
  • the Bluebook (for legal citations);
  • The Chicago Manual of Style (used in arts, literature, history and other spheres).

Then it all comes down to downloading a manual (or getting familiar with in online) and sticking with the guide precisely. It will contain all necessary information on type, spacing options, the appearance of a reference list and so on. All the parameters can be easily changed in any text editor. When this is done too, there is only one step left towards a brilliant paper.

Grammar And Spelling

Traditionally, you would read about the importance of checking spelling in a paper and its grammar somewhere in the beginning, but we intentionally shifted this aspect to the bottom. The thing is that students tend to focus on grammar and forget about everything else, whereas grammar is only one of the important issues.

So, we suggest focusing on it after the previous job is done, when your essay can boast a perfect structure, vocabulary choice and style characteristics. Only in this case grammar and spelling amendments will be a finishing touch to the text.

We always recommend entrusting this task to a person with flawless language knowledge. Whereas previous tips required writing skills mainly, this one relies completely on the level of mastering English. To make quick improvements, find an online checking tool, but to make changes profound and qualitative, you will have to seek after further tips for practicing grammar or hire a specialist.

Contact An Academic Editor

This advice crosses out everything we were talking about previously because academic editing from our company is an all-inclusive project that works in all the directions we outlined to create a perfect paper out of your draft. Academic writers from Royal Editing will structure your essay, improve the word choice and correct grammar mistakes – and all this you get only by placing an order on this website. The offer is win-win since you will have to spend no time on editing and the amount of invested money covers all amelioration at once. Sounds interesting? Order from us now or get more insight into the services with the help of these articles:

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