Editing and proofreading services online

 

Proofreading is as important as any other stage of the writing process, from concept to publication. A single punctuation, formatting, or spelling error is enough to ruin an entire piece. Polished Paper is here to put the necessary finishing touches on your work.

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Professional essay editing and proofreading Your Way To Success

International students often hire professional editing services, especially when they have to submit their dissertation papers. Writing a quality dissertation matters most because not only it signifies the academic skill of the student; it has a tremendous impact on the student’s career graph in the international studies field.

Writing a quality dissertation is not an easy task, as it needs subject expertise, a means of presenting the research matter, and flawless grammar. Whereas subject knowledge and the presentation can be unique, a student may need to enlist an expert service to check the quality of the dissertation, and this quality checking is done by editing and proofreading service by Polished Paper.

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Professional Editor's Corner: Articles

The British Council (2006) found that 375 million individuals speak English as a first language, another 375 million as a second language, and 750 million as a foreign language. That amounts to about 1.5 billion, or one-fifth of the world’s population. Clearly proficiency in English is of increasing importance.

In the course of our work at Polished Paper, we see a lot of writing from non-native speakers of English. In fact, we have regular customers on every continent! Well, except for Antarctica. That has allowed us to note a few common problem areas. In this blog entry and others to come, we’ll look at some basics, important aspects of English to get right so that you don’t immediately stand out as a non-native English speaker.

We’ll start with definite and indefinite articles. They are important in English, but a great many languages use neither (198 to be exact). A couple of major examples are Chinese and Russian. For native speakers of such languages, understanding the difference between definite and indefinite articles can pose a challenge.

Let’s start with the difference between abstract and concrete nouns.

Abstract nouns are general. They refer to ideas, feelings, or qualities. Examples include peace, civilization, society, love, communism, democracy, beauty, and Manifest Destiny.  

Concrete nouns are specific. They refer to a person, place, or thing that you can ‘perceive’ with one of the five senses. You can see them, smell them, touch them, hear them, and/or taste them. Examples include sneeze, planet, curry, city, Pyramids, soil, and vice-president.

So what are the kinds of articles and which do we use with abstract and concrete nouns?
Nouns in English appear 1) with NO article, 2) with the INDEFINITE article (‘a’ before nouns starting with a consonant, ‘an” before nouns starting with a vowel), or 3) with the DEFINITE article (‘the’)

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Basic Rules
1. Abstract nouns (in their most basic form) do not require an article at all.
 Society is a collection of individuals who have common goals and values.
 Civilizations come and go.

2. Concrete nouns can take either “a/an” or “the” in different circumstances. It depends HOW SPECIFIC the noun is. That is, it depends whether you are talking about ONE OF MANY or JUST ONE (no other exists).

Can I have AN apple? (Any apple is fine.)
Can I have THE apple on the counter? (I want one specific apple: the apple on the counter. No other apple will do.)

3. We sometimes make abstract nouns less general by adding detail. When we do that, we use either “a/an” or “the” depending on how specific we are.

ONE OF MANY
A love that has no conditions is the best.
An idea I like is getting kids to do creative writing in first grade.

JUST ONE
The ancient civilization of Egypt emerged about five thousand years ago.
The democracy of the United States is much different from the democracy that the Athenians practiced.

Rules for Plural Ideas
1. When you would use ‘a/an’ for a noun in the singular, drop it in the plural.
I want a black horse. (Any black horse is okay.)
With the plural, we still have this idea of ONE OF MANY. But instead of one member of a single group, we have one group within a larger group.
Black horses are my favorite kind. (Out of all horses—white, grey, brown, and black—black horses are my favorite.)
2. When you would not use an article or when you would use ‘the’ for a noun in the singular, do the same for the plural.

Friendship is more important than work.
Friendships are more important than work.
In both cases, these are general, abstracts.

For ‘the’ in the plural, we are still talking about JUST ONE (only now, we mean just one group).
The girl who lives next door is pretty. (Of all the girls in the world, there is only one girl that lives next door.)
The girls who live on my street are pretty. (Of all the groups of girls in the world, there is only one group of girls on my street.)

Blog source: https://polishedpaper.com/blog/professional-editors-corner-articles

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Editing and Proofreading: How Both Help Improve Your Essay

International students often hire professional editing services, especially when they have to submit their dissertation papers. Writing a quality dissertation matters most because not only it signifies the academic skill of the student; it has a tremendous impact on the student's career graph in the international studies field. Know more: https://polishedpaper.com/proofreading-services

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Polished Paper –Just Don’t We Edit; We Safeguard Your Written Reputation!

 

Polished Paper, as the name indicates, aims at providing refined, accurate text by identifying and correcting grammatical, lexical, and syntax errors in a written document. Unlike other proofreading agencies, Polished Paper has not occupied such a major space in the international market through its editing and proofreading services alone, but by employing outstanding editors to pin-point a variety of goof-ups such as simple typographical, spelling, grammatical, and word-selection errors.

Know more: https://polishedpaper.com/

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Voice and Person in APA Style

 

Imagine you are writing a dissertation or journal article in the social sciences. You want to sound objective and professional. For that purpose, which person should you use: first (I/we) or third (he/she/they)? Which voice: active or passive? Once upon a time, you would have said third and passive without even blinking. Not so now.

If you start with the first question, asking whether the first person (I, we) is appropriate for writing in the social sciences, you will find people on both sides of the fence. The choice of whether to use this ultimately depends on the institution to which you belong or the journal to which you are submitting. However, as far as APA style is concerned, the first person is not only appropriate but perhaps also ideal. Why? Quite simply, for clarity and ethical considerations.

Clarity

The APA style manual indicates in 2.04, the section on writing abstracts, that abstracts should be “coherent and readable,” which, for the style manual authors, means using the active rather than the passive voice (26). Moreover, in 3.18, the section on verbs, the authors recommend using the active voice everywhere except possibly the Method section, where “the passive voice is acceptable . . . when you want to focus on the object or recipient of the action rather than the actor” (emphasis mine, 77). The examples in these sections use “the authors” or “we” to demonstrate use of the active. In fact, more often than not, the style manual uses “I” or “we” in examples of correct usage.

Therefore, unless precluded by other standards (i.e., those of your institution or a specific journal), you want, as much as possible, to use the active vs. the passive voice.

Why is the active rather than the passive clearer? And why does using the active often mean using the first person?

First, the active voice is direct. When action occurs, the subject is doing the action. Moreover, when you are describing your own actions in the active, the most direct way, the clearest way, is to use “I” or “we.”

Take, for example, the following sentence: “I conducted interviews with the 29 participants.”

“I,” the subject, is doing the action, “conducting interviews.”

The passive is indirect. In such language, the subject is the receiver of the action. We can put the example above into the passive using “be” and the past participle (and switching the subject and object).

“The interviews were conducted by me.”

Notice, we can construct the passive without ever telling who is doing the action simply by leaving out the prepositional phrase (“by me”). That is to say, the passive allows us to obscure or omit important details.

Let’s look at another example to see where confusion can occur.

“The interviews were audio-recorded and transcribed.”

Here, you are not explaining who is doing what, which could cause confusion. Did the interviewer audio-record and then transcribe the audio-recording him or herself, or did the interviewer use a third party? This could be important for someone especially concerned with confidentiality. Even with steps not at all involving confidentiality, a fellow researcher may want to replicate the study and knowing who did what, how, and when will then be important.

 

Ethical Considerations

Let’s look at another example to see where ethical considerations enter the picture.

“The surveys were given to the respondents.”

This sentence raises all the concerns about clarity and one more: agency. When you use the passive to talk about people who are participating in a study, you are treating them like objects because they have action done TO them rather than doing the action themselves. This is problematic.

In recent decades, social scientists have worked hard to protect research participants’ privacy and mental and physical well-being (through informed consent, among other measures). Therefore, when you discuss study participants, you want to give them as much agency as possible. The APA style manual explains this in greater detail in Guideline 3 (Acknowledge Participation) of the Guidelines for Reducing Bias (73).

For example, instead of writing, “The listening task was administered to the participants,” you should say, “The participants completed the listening task.”

What does all this mean? What should you do?

1. In all sections, except perhaps the Method section, use the active voice and the first person (I/we) to describe your own actions and the third to describe the actions of other researchers (e.g., in the Literature Review section).

2. If you use the passive voice in the Method section, do so as little as possible and do not do so when you are talking about participants’ actions.

3. If you are not comfortable using the first person for yourself (or your research team) or if other standards conflict, consider using the third person for you or your research team (“the present researcher(s)”).

4. Finally, whichever choice you make, let us know so that we can edit accordingly.

Blog source: https://polishedpaper.com/blog/voice-and-person-apa-style

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Why you Need Proofreading?

Proofreading is as important as any other stage of the writing process, from concept to publication. A single punctuation, formatting, or spelling error is enough to ruin an entire piece. Polished Paper is here to put the necessary finishing touches on your work.

Know more: https://polishedpaper.com/proofreading-services

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