Editing Academic English

Academic English has its own problems. A student may have learnt English through conversation, work, textbooks or a mixture of all three, and then be expected to write a dissertation in a form of English they rarely use anywhere else.

That does not mean filling the work with longer words and formal expressions. It means knowing which English is appropriate for academic writing and which is not.

Spoken English Can Creep In

Something that sounds perfectly normal in conversation can look surprisingly casual on the page. Expressions such as a lot of, a bit, things like this or obviously may need attention, depending on how they are being used.

An editor looks for these shifts in register. The answer is not automatically to replace every ordinary expression with a more elaborate one. Sometimes the sentence simply needs to be more specific.

The results were a bit surprising tells the reader very little. Why were they surprising, and compared with what?

That is partly a language problem, but it is also a question the student has to answer.

Formal English Can Go Too Far

The opposite happens just as often. Students know academic writing is formal, so use becomes utilise, help becomes facilitate and a straightforward sentence acquires three extra clauses.

The result may be grammatically impressive and almost impossible to read. An editor should be able to distinguish between necessary academic terminology and language that has become complicated simply because the writer is trying to sound academic.

There is no academic advantage in using six words where three are more accurate.

Small Words Cause Big Problems

The most obvious mistakes are not always the ones that make English sound unnatural. Articles, prepositions and word combinations can be far more persistent: the research, research, an analysis of, responsible for, associated with, depend on.

These are particularly difficult because there is often no useful rule that can be applied everywhere. English simply uses a particular word or construction in that context.

An editor familiar with this kind of work will notice patterns rather than correcting the same problem fifty times without comment. If a student repeatedly makes the same error, knowing what it is can be more useful than receiving fifty silent corrections.

Terminology Needs Watching

A dissertation may be written over a long period, and terminology can change along the way. The student may begin with one term, adopt another after further reading and use both in the final draft without noticing.

That does not mean the editor should simply choose one and replace the other. In academic work, two apparently similar terms may have different meanings. The inconsistency needs to be identified, but the student may need to decide which term is correct.

The same applies to abbreviations, capitalisation, names of theories and other subject-specific conventions.

Editing Should Leave Useful Information Behind

A clean document is useful, but so is knowing what was wrong with it. If the same language problem occurs repeatedly, an editor can identify the pattern. The student then has something they can recognise in the next essay, paper or chapter they write.

That is particularly valuable for someone working academically in a second language. The point is not merely to produce one better document, but to show where their written English repeatedly causes problems.