What is academic proofreading?

Copyediting and proofreading have different purposes. Academic copyeditors work on an author’s manuscript, checking for consistency, correlating different sections, correcting grammar and usage, and identifying structural and organisational problems. In contrast, proofreaders correct errors introduced during typesetting, formatting, or file conversion of the final document and, in some cases, identify errors that were not caught during copyediting.

Academic proofreading is the final quality check before your manuscript is submitted for publishing. It focuses on accuracy, consistency and alignment with the publisher’s house style, without altering the meaning or tone of your work.

Both copyediting and proofreading are vital steps in the writing process.

What do you check during proofreading?

We review all elements of editorial style, including:

• spelling
• hyphenation
• capitalisation
• punctuation
• use of numerals
• footnotes and endnotes
• acronyms
• italics and bold type
• Treatment of special elements. These can include headings, lists, tables, and images. Images fall into two main categories: figures (including photographs, illustrations, drawings, diagrams, logos, graphs, and maps) and tables.

Do you check cross-references, footnotes, endnotes and references?

Yes. Proofreading includes cross-checking the different parts of the scholarly manuscript. This includes:

• verifying any cross-references that appear in the text
• checking the numbering of footnotes, endnotes, figures (including photographs, illustrations, drawings, diagrams, logos, graphs and maps) and tables
• specifying the placement of figures and tables
• checking the content of the tables and images against the captions and against the text
• reading the list of tables and images against the captions and comparing the entries in the list to the tables and images themselves
• checking the citations and permissions of tables and images
• reading the table of contents against the headings and sub-headings in the manuscript.

Do you follow specific journal or publisher guidelines?

Yes. Before commencing proofreading, we check which style manual the publisher prefers. Our proofreading service also investigates if there is a preferred in-house dictionary.

We will also request an in-house style guide tipsheet, if available, or a checklist of editorial preferences.

Our proofreading service will also include an investigation of earlier editions or comparable texts that should be consulted. If the document or manuscript is part of a publication series, we will review other texts in the series for comparison.

Does proofreading change the author’s argument or findings?

No. Proofreading should not change an author’s arguments or findings. As proofreaders, we will not attempt to impose our stylistic preferences or prejudices on the author. Our focus is on ensuring accuracy, consistency and alignment with the publisher’s house style, while aiming to preserve the author’s individual style or ‘authorial voice’.

Who benefits from academic proofreading?

Researchers or scholars preparing journal articles, book chapters, book-length monographs, edited collections of essays, conference papers or other scholarly documents who want to ensure their manuscript conforms to an editorial style, also known as a house or in-house style, which refers to the style preference of a publishing house.

What about the use of AI tools for academic proofreading?

AI tools can be both an opportunity and a threat. For instance, on the one hand, there are many AI tools for proofreading, such as ChatGPT, Grammarly, QuillBot, and PerfectIt, all of which can speed up academic productivity. On the other hand, these same AI tools can risk integrity, accuracy and reliability.

There are also many ethical concerns relating to privacy (such as uploading confidential content), ownership (who owns the text generated by AI), and where data is stored.

Unfortunately, the use of AI tools is now so widespread that most scholarly readers can easily detect work written by an AI bot rather than a human being. AI tools use predictable patterns, repetitive phrasing, and uniform sentence structures lacking any sense of tone, style and nuance, which are necessary for scholarly writing.

In general, AI proofreading tools can assist in detecting common typesetting, spelling, and grammatical errors, but they have limited ability to understand the heart or soul of a text, or the unique authorial voice or tone of a document, let alone address the more substantive ethical concerns.

If you would like to know more about how Wise Directions Copyediting can benefit you, please contact us today.