Proofreading and light editing services
From my own school and university days, not to mention my work as a teacher, I know only too well that finding your own mistakes is very hard, especially when you’ve been looking at the work for a long time. Much better for someone else to come in cold and look over it! I will proofread and light edit your
- academic documents (essays, dissertations, theses, coursework)
- CVs and supporting statements
- personal statements
- websites, press releases, small ads, flyers, magazines, newsletters, reports
- manuscripts
When I proofread your work, I look out for and amend spelling mistakes, incorrect words in the context, punctuation mistakes (including incorrect paragraphing) and grammatical mistakes. (How many people know that, to be correct, we should write ‘if I were you . . .’ and not ‘if I was you…’?) Don’t forget that Spell Check won’t pick up a word which has two spellings or more and is spelt incorrectly in the context of your work e.g. to/too, or when you miss out a letter by mistake and the word you are left with is still an actual word e.g. bird/bid, through/though, your/you.
When I light edit your work, I make suggestions about improving your style of writing, for example choice of vocabulary for the context and level of your work.
I’ve worked for years with children and adults who do not speak English as their first language and am attuned to the sorts of mistakes they make. I will make sure that good ideas are presented in perfect English.
If you ask me to proofread and edit your work, I can either make the changes directly onto your text, or I can use the ‘track changes’ facility. This facility means that you keep control over your work and either accept the suggested changes or not. Simply tell me what you want me to do.
Below is an example of a sentence with mistakes and then the corrected sentence:
From my own school and university days not to mention my work as a teacher I know only to well that finding you own mistakes is very hard.
From my own school and university days, not to mention my work as a teacher, I know only too well that finding your own mistakes is very hard.
And here is the same sentence with ‘track changes’ corrections for you to accept or reject
From my own school and university days, not to mention my work as a teacher, I know only too well that finding your own mistakes is very hard.
(Note that neither ‘to’ nor ‘you’ would come up as a spelling mistake on Spell Check because they do exist as proper words – but they’re not right for this sentence.)
Simply upload your work using the contact form to the left of this page or email it to info@written-for-you.co.uk
