Developmental editing

When you need this instead of a language edit

Line editing a draft whose structure is wrong is expensive and wasteful: you pay for polish on paragraphs you are about to delete. These are the signs that the problem is structural.

• A reviewer said the paper “lacks focus” or “tries to do too much”
• You cannot state your contribution in one sentence without an “and also”
• The literature review is long and does not obviously lead to your question
• Your most interesting finding appears on page nineteen
• Two co-authors wrote two halves that do not agree on framing
• The thesis chapters were written as separate papers and now read like them

What you receive

An editorial report, typically four to eight pages, written by an editor who reads your field. It is not a list of corrections; it is an analysis and a plan.

• The argument as it currently reads — stated back to you, which is often the most useful page
• Structural diagnosis — what each section is doing, what is missing, what is doing a job twice
• A revision plan — an ordered list of changes, heaviest first, with an estimate of the work each involves
• Reader friction points — where a reviewer will stop, and why
• An optional 45-minute call — to argue with the report, which is the point of it

How it is charged

By the hour, from USD 50, with the number of hours agreed before we start. A journal article usually takes four to eight hours; a thesis chapter six to ten; a full book proposal ten to twenty. You get a fixed ceiling, and we do not exceed it without asking.

Afterwards

Most authors revise on their own for a few weeks and then come back for the language edit. If you order both in the same project we take the developmental fee off the editing price on the revised manuscript, up to five hours' worth.