The purpose of editing is to make
a passage easier to understand for the reader and to convey the writer’s exact
meaning. A writer is subjective, and to him/her, a sentence appears to say what
is in his/her mind, but to a reader, a punctuation error or the incorrect use
of a word can convey an altogether different meaning. That is one reason why a
document should be edited by someone else. A paper or essay needs to conform to
guidelines on topic expertise and language perfection. The latter is achieved
through editing.
- An editor examines the work from the perspective of language, grammar, style, and consistency.
- He or she examines the work’s structure, which is so important in academic writing. Structural deficiencies are solved with rewording and organizing sentences and paragraphs for a logical flow of thoughts. Editing means checking for verbosity, ensuring proper sentence structure, checking for ambiguity and repetition, and take care of the tone of the paper. This done, he or she proceeds to taking care of grammar, punctuation, and spelling.
- Finally, since academic work must conform to a specific style, such as MLA, APA, Chicago or Turabian, the editor also corrects referencing and citations. An editor must also address minor matters like the use of italics, order of names, numbering, headings, headers, graphs, and footers.
Editing, in some ways, is more
difficult than writing because an editor needs to have exceptional command over
language as well as knowledge of standards and conventions.
