Substantive editing, also known as comprehensive editing, focuses on the content, its organisation and presentation. It is the first step in the editing process and is often considered as a complicated process. Substantive editing ensures that your paper stands in the right direction. This type of editing process provides robust and thorough feedback among all other kinds of edits.
Importance of substantive editing
Substantive editing checks if the research document addresses any kind of issues with the contents.
Ensures that the information provided is complete and reflects an appropriate level of detail for your readers.
Overviews each section and provide a high-level summary of the chapters and texts within a section.
What does substantive editing look for?
Structure - This process checks if the contents, arguments and chapters are arranged logically through your research document. It investigates if the information and the sentences are well structured, precise and are easy to find, read and are genuine. Ensures that all the paragraphs are complete and transitions between sections are smooth.
Language - While writing the document, one must have a command over the language. Substantive editing inspects if the language and terminology used with the context are clear and suitable for the target audience. It also makes sure that the research document does not contain any unnecessary jargon.
Content - It ensures that no content/ ideas are repeated and that no content is missing. It also makes sure that the relationship between crucial points are clear and the quotation included support the arguments effectively. Ensures that the new concepts and terms that are used are fully explained in a context.
Writing style and presentation - This process checks if the tone and style of the information are appropriate for the intended audience. It inspects if the writer has used consistent terminology and active voice is used over passive voice. It thoroughly checks if the lists are parallel, punctuations are correctly placed, the pages are numbered, and apt bullets are used as per the target journal. Substantive editing determines if the word choices and phrases are appropriate for international journals & audiences. It also checks if the presentation is simple, clear and effective. Checks for appropriateness clarity of tables, figures and their accuracy.
Grammar and citations- Substantive editing ensure that all the grammatical errors, misspellings, subject-verb agreement, and vocabulary errors are nullified. It thoroughly checks the research document and ensures that the writer has followed all the guidelines set by a citation style.
You research document has the potential to get you one step closer to your goals. Hence it becomes a necessity to edit your research document. If you are not confident about the editing process, consider taking assistance from the professional editors.