In spoken English or informal writing, the placement of only is rarely an issue, so go with your ear. Here is an example:
Tea only tastes good when I’m sad. Tea tastes good only when I’m sad.
Both sentences have the same meaning: I like the taste of tea only when I’m sad.
In academic writing, though, be careful with the placement of modifiers to avoid introducing ambiguity and attracting criticism from reviewers.
An example of a PhD dissertation to book metamorphosis that became a New York Times bestseller is Everybody Lies: Big Data, New Data, and What the Internet Can Tell Us About Who We Really Are. Thanks to the traveler who left a copy of this book in a hotel in Corvara, Italy, because it inspired me to write this article on PhD-based books.
Why get your PhD published as a book? For many reasons. You may want to make the most of the effort you’ve put in during your doctorate. Or your breakthrough discovery must reach a wider audience. No matter your motivation, write it down. It will serve you as a reminder later, when revising your manuscript gets tough.
Let’s discover what it takes to turn a PhD thesis into a book so that you know what to expect if you choose to go down this road.
If you’ve never had an academic manuscript edited by a professional, chances are you know little about editing rates. So, how much does English language editing cost?
Academic editing rates vary a lot from one service provider to the next. Here’s what some of them charge for editing 9000 words as of March 2024 (I used Xe.com for currency conversion where needed): Read More
The question “What is editing?” doesn’t have only one answer. But many professional editors will define editing like this:
Editing is the process of reviewing a written text to correct and improve it so that it meets the needs of both the person who commissioned the work and the reader.
Editing comes after writing and before proofreading. Ideally, both come before publishing. Read More
If you’re a freelance editor, you’ve likely chosen this career because you love the written word and the chance to learn from every new editing project. But how do you manage your editing projects? Do you underestimate costs, overestimate requirements, and go above and beyond to make your clients happy?
To keep your editing business thriving, take a cue from project managers. Here are seven project-management-related concepts you should know more about if you want to manage your editing projects better.
Depending on your graphic design skills, perfectionism level, and available time, making scientific figures for publication could take as long as, or longer than, writing your research paper.
To save time, you might want to recycle and reuse some of the images you made for a poster or PowerPoint presentation. But tweaking them to fit the journal can be time-consuming. That’s why it’s often best to make graphics for research papers from scratch so you have publication-quality images.
Learn how to make scientific figures for publication in an effective way.
As an editor and proofreader, I’d say both editing and proofreading are essential. But I know sometimes authors need to choose between paying for editing and paying for proofreading, to keep costs low. So, which one should you invest in: editing or proofreading? Read More
If you’ve seen freelance editors advertise services such as language editing, manuscript editing, copyediting, developmental editing, and so on, you might have wondered what these terms mean. They all fall under the umbrella of English editing. I’ve explained many of them in the article What’s the difference between editing and proofreading?
In this short post I’m going to answer the question, What is language editing? Read More
Research proposals, business reports, articles, scholarly books—no matter what type of nonfiction document you write, you must respect the reader’s time. To do so, use the most effective way to communicate information by aiming for correctness, clarity, and concision.
When you edit your draft, examine your writing and see if you can spot any of the following signs you’re wasting the reader’s time. If you don’t know how to fix them or don’t have the time to do it, ask the help of a freelance editor.
Some of us were taught in school that the use of first-person personal pronouns makes scientific writing subjective. But it’s not true. Using we or I in a research paper does not always shift the spotlight away from the research. And writing in the third person or using passive voice does not make a piece of research writing objective. So, if a reviewer or thesis advisor tells you to remove all first-person references from your manuscript, know that it is not incorrect to use I or we in a paper, despite what many people believe.
So, the short answer to the question in the title is yes. It is acceptable to use we in your paper to refer to you and your co-authors. Whether you use first person pronouns or not is a writing style choice. Read More
In English, both it and they are used to refer to a company.
Example: According to the company, they (it) have (has) more than 50,000 employees.
The choice of pronoun depends on many things: context, type of written communication, house style, and more.
The common view is that in American English, company is referred to as it, whereas in British English, company is referred to as it or they, but they is more common. Read More
HTML, EU, and NATO are examples of acronyms. Merriam-Webster defines acronyms as words “formed from the initial letter or letters of each of the successive parts or major parts of a compound term”.
In some expressions, acronyms can be preceded by an indefinite article (a or an). But how do you choose the right indefinite article before acronyms?
Acronyms can be read as pronounceable words (for example, NASCAR) or as a series of letters (for example, BBC). It’s important to know how to pronounce an acronym, because the rule for choosing the right indefinite article before acronyms is based on pronunciation, not spelling. Read More
Publishing a paper, a book, or an article is hard work. When you succeed, it feels amazing. When you don’t, all you want is to put the failed project behind you and move on. But you shouldn’t. Not so fast, at least. A failed writing project is more than wasted hours and effort. It can teach you a lot.
Here are some of the most valuable lessons you can learn from a failed writing project.
Good editing is unobtrusive. A text that has been professionally edited reads seamlessly. You cannot tell where the author’s work ends and where the editor’s intervention starts, because the editor was able to emulate the author’s writing style. Read More
Mathematics is the guest star of many research papers in disciplines other than STEM. To write and edit research papers with math, you need to be familiar with equations and mathematical symbols. This article covers the basics of editing papers with math, including how to write equations in research papers and how to write and punctuate sentences with math symbols. Read More
Both center around and center on are correct.
Writing center on is logical, and no-one will object if you use this expression. But if you use center around, some may think your writing is illogical or sloppy. Read More
Yes, you should edit your own paper for grammar, spelling, logic, clarity, and style.
As the author of your research paper, you know better than anyone else what message you want to convey. So, it’s a good idea to be your paper’s first editor—but only if you know how to edit a research paper. (If you don’t, ask an experienced editor for tips, read academic writing books, and seek editing resources online.) Read More
If you need to follow APA Style and are wondering if all entries in your reference list must be cited in the main text, you need to first understand the difference between a reference list and a bibliography.
In general, the journals that follow APA Style use reference lists, not bibliographies. So, if you’re writing an APA research paper, you most likely need to create a reference list. Reference lists and bibliographies belong to different species.
A reference list has only the works cited in the text. In contrast, a bibliography comprises not only some or all the works cited in the text but also other works not mentioned in the text. These can be sources the author consulted in the preparation of the text, works recommended for further reading, or both. Also, bibliographies may contain notes (annotated bibliographies). Read More
You may think this simple question has a simple answer (either 12 a.m. or 12 p.m.), but it’s not quite so.
The abbreviation a.m. stands for the Latin phrase ante meridiem, and p.m. stands for post meridiem. In Latin, ante means before; post means after; and meridies means noon, or midday.
Midday is neither before noon (a.m.) nor after noon (p.m.). It’s m. (abbreviation for meridies).
So, it would be illogical to write 12 a.m. or 12 p.m. to mean noon. Read More
People hire a freelance editor for various reasons. Here are just some of them:
