How to Edit an Academic Paper

By Lon W. Schiffbauer, BA, MBA, PhD, SPHR

Editing and proofreading an academic manuscript involves more than simply checking for spelling, grammar, and formatting. A good editor checks for the following:

  1. Structure and Format: It includes all the required sections and is formatted correctly.
  2. Narrative Flow: It follows a clear, logical narrative flow throughout the manuscript, including smooth transitions from one topic to the next.
  3. Topic Discipline: It adheres to your stated research problem, never straying off topic.
  4. Coherence: It clearly conveys your line of reasoning.
  5. Academic Rigor: It properly cites research and substantiates your claims and interpretations.
  6. Grammar and Spelling: It maintains correct use of active versus passive voice, past, present, and future tense, verb agreement, third person, and spelling.
  7. Writing Style: It employs appropriate sentence length, economy of language, and academic tone (also known as scholarly voice).

Below are ten effective strategies for editing your manuscript:

  1. Carve out short periods of time in which to edit your manuscript. The brain can maintain focus for only so long before it starts to get slopping and miss things. Keep your mental focus sharp by editing in one-hour blocks throughout the day.
  2. Work from a printout, not a computer screen. The physical nature of paper makes it easier for the brain to engage with and form a mental map of the content. Another advantage is a physical printout can be taken with you anywhere and pulled out whenever you have some spare time (sitting in the doctor’s office, waiting for an appointment, needing a break from whatever you’re doing at the moment, etc.).
  3. Read your manuscript aloud. When we read our own content the eye tends to see what it expects to see—what we intended to write—not what is actually on the page. When we read the material out loud it forces us to slow down and read what’s actually on the page. Furthermore, the ear will hear things that the eye will often excuse, things like poor grammar and fragmented sentences.
  4. Use a blank sheet of paper to cover the lines below the one you’re reading. This keeps your eye from slipping into scan mode and forces you to slow down and focus it on the content. This also helps you read each sentence individually and assess it as a standalone thought.
  5. Highlight, circle, or otherwise check off every punctuation mark. This forces you to pay close attention to each mark and challenge its use. This is especially helpful when proofreading your references.
  6. Read your manuscript from back to front (as well as from front to back). This technique is helpful for a couple of reasons. First, it breaks up the narrative flow and helps you focus on things like sentence structure, grammar, spelling, citations, and so forth. Second, it brings the same fresh-eyes level of attention to the end of the document as is normally reserved for the beginning. As we read and reread our own material our interest inevitably wanes. This means the latter half of the manuscript often receives less editorial rigor.
  7. Use your computer’s search function to find common mistakes that you find cropping up. This is a good way to quickly find and fix instances of that/who, effect/affect, its/it’s, and other common grammatical errors that may vex you.
  8. Compartmentalize your edits to focus your attention on specific editorial objectives. This means doing distinct editorial passes for things like structure and format, narrative flow, academic rigor—all those things mentioned up at the top. This calibrates your eye to look for and find specific common mistakes. When doing this, start with the big things first, then move on to the nitpicky detail criteria.
  9. Read the paper as a reader, not as the writer. Words are nothing more than symbols we use to convey an idea. The problem is that, since the idea is already clear in our own heads, we may not communicate these ideas as clearly as we perhaps could. It’s the curse of knowledge: a cognitive bias that assumes that others know what we know. To overcome this, approach your manuscript through the eyes of someone that may know very little about your topic.
  10. Edit your entire manuscript ten times. I know this sounds excessive, but I assure you, it’s not. To deliver a quality final manuscript the document should go through several drafts: a rough draft, a working draft, a first draft, and a final draft. Each one of these drafts require at least two editorial passes. Even after ten edits your manuscript won’t be perfect (even after ten edits I have found errors in my PhD dissertation and book since publication), but at least you’ll know that it’s the best you can possibly deliver before the law of depreciating return flattens out on you.

So there you are. Now go off and writing something awesome!

Lon is an Associate Professor of Business Management at Salt Lake Community College and holds an MBA, a PhD, and is a certified Senior Professional in Human Resources (SPHR). In addition to his academic background, Lon spent close to 30 years working and consulting for such companies as FedEx, Intel, eBay, and PayPal, as well as a variety of small to mid-sized companies around the world.