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• Sentence type flow Pieces with good flow will make use of all four sentence types, varying them to keep the reader interested.
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The boxer decked his opponent.

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Her long dress touched the floor.

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ProWritingAid’s essay checker will show you what it thinks are spelling errors and present you with possible corrections. If a word is flagged and it’s actually spelt correctly you can always choose to ignore the suggestion.

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A missing period or comma here and there may not seem that serious, but you’ll lose marks for punctuation errors. Run ProWritingAid’s paper checker to use the correct punctuation marks every time and elevate your writing.

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The editing tool analyzes your text and highlights a variety of key writing issues, such as overused words, incohesive sentence structures, punctuation issues, repeated phrases, and inconsistencies.

You don’t need to drown your essay in words just to meet the word count. ProWritingAid’s essay checker will help to make your words more effective. You'll get to construct your arguments and make sure that every word you use builds towards a meaningful conclusion.

Transition words help to organize your ideas by showing the relationship between them. The essay checker has a built in Transition report that highlights and shows the percentage of transitions used in your essay. Use the results to add transitions where necessary.

An engaging essay has sentences of varying lengths. Don’t bore your professor with long, rambling sentences. The essay checker will show you where you need to break long sentences into shorter sentences, or add more sentence length variation.

Generally, in scholarly writing, with its emphasis on precision and clarity, the active voice is preferred. However, the passive voice is acceptable in some instances. When you run your essay through ProWritingAid’s essay checker, you get feedback on whether you 'r e using the passive or active voice to convey your idea.

There are academic specific power verbs like appraise , investigate , debunk , support , etc., that can add more impact to your argument by giving a more positive and confident tone. The essay checker will check your writing for power verbs and notify you if you have less than three throughout your essay.

It's easy to get attached to certain phrases and use them as crutches in your essays but this gives the impression of boring and repetitive writing. The essay checker will highlight your repeats and suggest contextually relevant alternatives.

Gain access to in-house blog reports on citations, how to write a thesis statement, how to write a conclusion, and more. Venture into a world of resources specific to your academic needs.

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Questions & Answers

1. how do i use the essay checker online tool.

You can either copy and paste your essay in the essay checker field or upload your essay from your computer. Your suggestions will show once you enter text. You’ll see a number of possible grammar and spelling issues. Sign up for free to get unlimited suggestions to improve your writing style, grammar, and sentence structure. Avoid unintentional plagiarism with a premium account.

2. Does the essay checker work with British English and American English?

The essay checker works with both British English and American English. Just choose the one you would like to use and your corrections will reflect this.

3. Is using an essay checker cheating?

No. The essay checker won’t ever write the essay for you. It will point out possible edits and advise you on changes you need to make. You have full autonomy and get to decide which changes to accept.

4. Will the essay checker auto-correct my work?

The essay writing power remains in your hands. You choose which suggestions you want to accept and you can ignore those that you don’t think apply.

5. Is there a student discount?

Students who have an eligible student email address can get 20% off ProWritingAid Premium. Email [email protected] from your student email address to access your discount.

6. Does ProWritingAid have a plagiarism checker?

Yes! ProWritingAid’s plagiarism checker will check your work against over a billion web-pages, published works, and academic papers, so you can be sure of its originality. Find out more about pricing for plagiarism checks here .

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Sat / act prep online guides and tips, getting college essay help: important do's and don’ts.

College Essays

If you grow up to be a professional writer, everything you write will first go through an editor before being published. This is because the process of writing is really a process of re-writing —of rethinking and reexamining your work, usually with the help of someone else. So what does this mean for your student writing? And in particular, what does it mean for very important, but nonprofessional writing like your college essay? Should you ask your parents to look at your essay? Pay for an essay service?

If you are wondering what kind of help you can, and should, get with your personal statement, you've come to the right place! In this article, I'll talk about what kind of writing help is useful, ethical, and even expected for your college admission essay . I'll also point out who would make a good editor, what the differences between editing and proofreading are, what to expect from a good editor, and how to spot and stay away from a bad one.

Table of Contents

What Kind of Help for Your Essay Can You Get?

What's Good Editing?

What should an editor do for you, what kind of editing should you avoid, proofreading, what's good proofreading, what kind of proofreading should you avoid.

What Do Colleges Think Of You Getting Help With Your Essay?

Who Can/Should Help You?

Advice for editors.

Should You Pay Money For Essay Editing?

The Bottom Line

What's next, what kind of help with your essay can you get.

Rather than talking in general terms about "help," let's first clarify the two different ways that someone else can improve your writing . There is editing, which is the more intensive kind of assistance that you can use throughout the whole process. And then there's proofreading, which is the last step of really polishing your final product.

Let me go into some more detail about editing and proofreading, and then explain how good editors and proofreaders can help you."

Editing is helping the author (in this case, you) go from a rough draft to a finished work . Editing is the process of asking questions about what you're saying, how you're saying it, and how you're organizing your ideas. But not all editing is good editing . In fact, it's very easy for an editor to cross the line from supportive to overbearing and over-involved.

Ability to clarify assignments. A good editor is usually a good writer, and certainly has to be a good reader. For example, in this case, a good editor should make sure you understand the actual essay prompt you're supposed to be answering.

Open-endedness. Good editing is all about asking questions about your ideas and work, but without providing answers. It's about letting you stick to your story and message, and doesn't alter your point of view.

Think of an editor as a great travel guide. It can show you the many different places your trip could take you. It should explain any parts of the trip that could derail your trip or confuse the traveler. But it never dictates your path, never forces you to go somewhere you don't want to go, and never ignores your interests so that the trip no longer seems like it's your own. So what should good editors do?

Help Brainstorm Topics

Sometimes it's easier to bounce thoughts off of someone else. This doesn't mean that your editor gets to come up with ideas, but they can certainly respond to the various topic options you've come up with. This way, you're less likely to write about the most boring of your ideas, or to write about something that isn't actually important to you.

If you're wondering how to come up with options for your editor to consider, check out our guide to brainstorming topics for your college essay .

Help Revise Your Drafts

Here, your editor can't upset the delicate balance of not intervening too much or too little. It's tricky, but a great way to think about it is to remember: editing is about asking questions, not giving answers .

Revision questions should point out:

• Places where more detail or more description would help the reader connect with your essay
• Places where structure and logic don't flow, losing the reader's attention
• Places where there aren't transitions between paragraphs, confusing the reader
• Moments where your narrative or the arguments you're making are unclear

But pointing to potential problems is not the same as actually rewriting—editors let authors fix the problems themselves.

Bad editing is usually very heavy-handed editing. Instead of helping you find your best voice and ideas, a bad editor changes your writing into their own vision.

You may be dealing with a bad editor if they:

• Add material (examples, descriptions) that doesn't come from you
• Use a thesaurus to make your college essay sound "more mature"
• Add meaning or insight to the essay that doesn't come from you
• Tell you what to say and how to say it
• Write sentences, phrases, and paragraphs for you
• Change your voice in the essay so it no longer sounds like it was written by a teenager

Colleges can tell the difference between a 17-year-old's writing and a 50-year-old's writing. Not only that, they have access to your SAT or ACT Writing section, so they can compare your essay to something else you wrote. Writing that's a little more polished is great and expected. But a totally different voice and style will raise questions.

Where's the Line Between Helpful Editing and Unethical Over-Editing?

Sometimes it's hard to tell whether your college essay editor is doing the right thing. Here are some guidelines for staying on the ethical side of the line.

• An editor should say that the opening paragraph is kind of boring, and explain what exactly is making it drag. But it's overstepping for an editor to tell you exactly how to change it.
• An editor should point out where your prose is unclear or vague. But it's completely inappropriate for the editor to rewrite that section of your essay.
• An editor should let you know that a section is light on detail or description. But giving you similes and metaphors to beef up that description is a no-go.

Proofreading (also called copy-editing) is checking for errors in the last draft of a written work. It happens at the end of the process and is meant as the final polishing touch. Proofreading is meticulous and detail-oriented, focusing on small corrections. It sands off all the surface rough spots that could alienate the reader.

Because proofreading is usually concerned with making fixes on the word or sentence level, this is the only process where someone else can actually add to or take away things from your essay . This is because what they are adding or taking away tends to be one or two misplaced letters.

Laser focus. Proofreading is all about the tiny details, so the ability to really concentrate on finding small slip-ups is a must.

Excellent grammar and spelling skills. Proofreaders need to dot every "i" and cross every "t." Good proofreaders should correct spelling, punctuation, capitalization, and grammar. They should put foreign words in italics and surround quotations with quotation marks. They should check that you used the correct college's name, and that you adhered to any formatting requirements (name and date at the top of the page, uniform font and size, uniform spacing).

Limited interference. A proofreader needs to make sure that you followed any word limits. But if cuts need to be made to shorten the essay, that's your job and not the proofreader's.

A bad proofreader either tries to turn into an editor, or just lacks the skills and knowledge necessary to do the job.

Some signs that you're working with a bad proofreader are:

• If they suggest making major changes to the final draft of your essay. Proofreading happens when editing is already finished.
• If they aren't particularly good at spelling, or don't know grammar, or aren't detail-oriented enough to find someone else's small mistakes.
• If they start swapping out your words for fancier-sounding synonyms, or changing the voice and sound of your essay in other ways. A proofreader is there to check for errors, not to take the 17-year-old out of your writing.

What Do Colleges Think of Your Getting Help With Your Essay?

Admissions officers agree: light editing and proofreading are good—even required ! But they also want to make sure you're the one doing the work on your essay. They want essays with stories, voice, and themes that come from you. They want to see work that reflects your actual writing ability, and that focuses on what you find important.

On the Importance of Editing

Get feedback. Have a fresh pair of eyes give you some feedback. Don't allow someone else to rewrite your essay, but do take advantage of others' edits and opinions when they seem helpful. ( Bates College )

Read your essay aloud to someone. Reading the essay out loud offers a chance to hear how your essay sounds outside your head. This exercise reveals flaws in the essay's flow, highlights grammatical errors and helps you ensure that you are communicating the exact message you intended. ( Dickinson College )

On the Value of Proofreading

Share your essays with at least one or two people who know you well—such as a parent, teacher, counselor, or friend—and ask for feedback. Remember that you ultimately have control over your essays, and your essays should retain your own voice, but others may be able to catch mistakes that you missed and help suggest areas to cut if you are over the word limit. ( Yale University )

Proofread and then ask someone else to proofread for you. Although we want substance, we also want to be able to see that you can write a paper for our professors and avoid careless mistakes that would drive them crazy. ( Oberlin College )

On Watching Out for Too Much Outside Influence

Limit the number of people who review your essay. Too much input usually means your voice is lost in the writing style. ( Carleton College )

Ask for input (but not too much). Your parents, friends, guidance counselors, coaches, and teachers are great people to bounce ideas off of for your essay. They know how unique and spectacular you are, and they can help you decide how to articulate it. Keep in mind, however, that a 45-year-old lawyer writes quite differently from an 18-year-old student, so if your dad ends up writing the bulk of your essay, we're probably going to notice. ( Vanderbilt University )

Now let's talk about some potential people to approach for your college essay editing and proofreading needs. It's best to start close to home and slowly expand outward. Not only are your family and friends more invested in your success than strangers, but they also have a better handle on your interests and personality. This knowledge is key for judging whether your essay is expressing your true self.

Parents or Close Relatives

Your family may be full of potentially excellent editors! Parents are deeply committed to your well-being, and family members know you and your life well enough to offer details or incidents that can be included in your essay. On the other hand, the rewriting process necessarily involves criticism, which is sometimes hard to hear from someone very close to you.

A parent or close family member is a great choice for an editor if you can answer "yes" to the following questions. Is your parent or close relative a good writer or reader? Do you have a relationship where editing your essay won't create conflict? Are you able to constructively listen to criticism and suggestion from the parent?

One suggestion for defusing face-to-face discussions is to try working on the essay over email. Send your parent a draft, have them write you back some comments, and then you can pick which of their suggestions you want to use and which to discard.

Teachers or Tutors

A humanities teacher that you have a good relationship with is a great choice. I am purposefully saying humanities, and not just English, because teachers of Philosophy, History, Anthropology, and any other classes where you do a lot of writing, are all used to reviewing student work.

Moreover, any teacher or tutor that has been working with you for some time, knows you very well and can vet the essay to make sure it "sounds like you."

If your teacher or tutor has some experience with what college essays are supposed to be like, ask them to be your editor. If not, then ask whether they have time to proofread your final draft.

Guidance or College Counselor at Your School

The best thing about asking your counselor to edit your work is that this is their job. This means that they have a very good sense of what colleges are looking for in an application essay.

At the same time, school counselors tend to have relationships with admissions officers in many colleges, which again gives them insight into what works and which college is focused on what aspect of the application.

Unfortunately, in many schools the guidance counselor tends to be way overextended. If your ratio is 300 students to 1 college counselor, you're unlikely to get that person's undivided attention and focus. It is still useful to ask them for general advice about your potential topics, but don't expect them to be able to stay with your essay from first draft to final version.

Friends, Siblings, or Classmates

Although they most likely don't have much experience with what colleges are hoping to see, your peers are excellent sources for checking that your essay is you .

Friends and siblings are perfect for the read-aloud edit. Read your essay to them so they can listen for words and phrases that are stilted, pompous, or phrases that just don't sound like you.

You can even trade essays and give helpful advice on each other's work.

If your editor hasn't worked with college admissions essays very much, no worries! Any astute and attentive reader can still greatly help with your process. But, as in all things, beginners do better with some preparation.

First, your editor should read our advice about how to write a college essay introduction , how to spot and fix a bad college essay , and get a sense of what other students have written by going through some admissions essays that worked .

Then, as they read your essay, they can work through the following series of questions that will help them to guide you.

Introduction Questions

• Is the first sentence a killer opening line? Why or why not?
• Does the introduction hook the reader? Does it have a colorful, detailed, and interesting narrative? Or does it propose a compelling or surprising idea?
• Can you feel the author's voice in the introduction, or is the tone dry, dull, or overly formal? Show the places where the voice comes through.

Essay Body Questions

• Does the essay have a through-line? Is it built around a central argument, thought, idea, or focus? Can you put this idea into your own words?
• How is the essay organized? By logical progression? Chronologically? Do you feel order when you read it, or are there moments where you are confused or lose the thread of the essay?
• Does the essay have both narratives about the author's life and explanations and insight into what these stories reveal about the author's character, personality, goals, or dreams? If not, which is missing?
• Does the essay flow? Are there smooth transitions/clever links between paragraphs? Between the narrative and moments of insight?

Reader Response Questions

• Does the writer's personality come through? Do we know what the speaker cares about? Do we get a sense of "who he or she is"?
• Where did you feel most connected to the essay? Which parts of the essay gave you a "you are there" sensation by invoking your senses? What moments could you picture in your head well?
• Where are the details and examples vague and not specific enough?
• Did you get an "a-ha!" feeling anywhere in the essay? Is there a moment of insight that connected all the dots for you? Is there a good reveal or "twist" anywhere in the essay?
• What are the strengths of this essay? What needs the most improvement?

Should You Pay Money for Essay Editing?

One alternative to asking someone you know to help you with your college essay is the paid editor route. There are two different ways to pay for essay help: a private essay coach or a less personal editing service , like the many proliferating on the internet.

My advice is to think of these options as a last resort rather than your go-to first choice. I'll first go through the reasons why. Then, if you do decide to go with a paid editor, I'll help you decide between a coach and a service.

When to Consider a Paid Editor

In general, I think hiring someone to work on your essay makes a lot of sense if none of the people I discussed above are a possibility for you.

If you can't ask your parents. For example, if your parents aren't good writers, or if English isn't their first language. Or if you think getting your parents to help is going create unnecessary extra conflict in your relationship with them (applying to college is stressful as it is!)

If you can't ask your teacher or tutor. Maybe you don't have a trusted teacher or tutor that has time to look over your essay with focus. Or, for instance, your favorite humanities teacher has very limited experience with college essays and so won't know what admissions officers want to see.

If you can't ask your guidance counselor. This could be because your guidance counselor is way overwhelmed with other students.

If you can't share your essay with those who know you. It might be that your essay is on a very personal topic that you're unwilling to share with parents, teachers, or peers. Just make sure it doesn't fall into one of the bad-idea topics in our article on bad college essays .

If the cost isn't a consideration. Many of these services are quite expensive, and private coaches even more so. If you have finite resources, I'd say that hiring an SAT or ACT tutor (whether it's PrepScholar or someone else) is better way to spend your money . This is because there's no guarantee that a slightly better essay will sufficiently elevate the rest of your application, but a significantly higher SAT score will definitely raise your applicant profile much more.

Should You Hire an Essay Coach?

On the plus side, essay coaches have read dozens or even hundreds of college essays, so they have experience with the format. Also, because you'll be working closely with a specific person, it's more personal than sending your essay to a service, which will know even less about you.

But, on the minus side, you'll still be bouncing ideas off of someone who doesn't know that much about you . In general, if you can adequately get the help from someone you know, there is no advantage to paying someone to help you.

If you do decide to hire a coach, ask your school counselor, or older students that have used the service for recommendations. If you can't afford the coach's fees, ask whether they can work on a sliding scale —many do. And finally, beware those who guarantee admission to your school of choice—essay coaches don't have any special magic that can back up those promises.

Should You Send Your Essay to a Service?

On the plus side, essay editing services provide a similar product to essay coaches, and they cost significantly less . If you have some assurance that you'll be working with a good editor, the lack of face-to-face interaction won't prevent great results.

On the minus side, however, it can be difficult to gauge the quality of the service before working with them . If they are churning through many application essays without getting to know the students they are helping, you could end up with an over-edited essay that sounds just like everyone else's. In the worst case scenario, an unscrupulous service could send you back a plagiarized essay.

Getting recommendations from friends or a school counselor for reputable services is key to avoiding heavy-handed editing that writes essays for you or does too much to change your essay. Including a badly-edited essay like this in your application could cause problems if there are inconsistencies. For example, in interviews it might be clear you didn't write the essay, or the skill of the essay might not be reflected in your schoolwork and test scores.

Should You Buy an Essay Written by Someone Else?

Let me elaborate. There are super sketchy places on the internet where you can simply buy a pre-written essay. Don't do this!

For one thing, you'll be lying on an official, signed document. All college applications make you sign a statement saying something like this:

I certify that all information submitted in the admission process—including the application, the personal essay, any supplements, and any other supporting materials—is my own work, factually true, and honestly presented... I understand that I may be subject to a range of possible disciplinary actions, including admission revocation, expulsion, or revocation of course credit, grades, and degree, should the information I have certified be false. (From the Common Application )

For another thing, if your academic record doesn't match the essay's quality, the admissions officer will start thinking your whole application is riddled with lies.

Admission officers have full access to your writing portion of the SAT or ACT so that they can compare work that was done in proctored conditions with that done at home. They can tell if these were written by different people. Not only that, but there are now a number of search engines that faculty and admission officers can use to see if an essay contains strings of words that have appeared in other essays—you have no guarantee that the essay you bought wasn't also bought by 50 other students.

• You should get college essay help with both editing and proofreading
• A good editor will ask questions about your idea, logic, and structure, and will point out places where clarity is needed
• A good editor will absolutely not answer these questions, give you their own ideas, or write the essay or parts of the essay for you
• A good proofreader will find typos and check your formatting
• All of them agree that getting light editing and proofreading is necessary
• Parents, teachers, guidance or college counselor, and peers or siblings
• If you can't ask any of those, you can pay for college essay help, but watch out for services or coaches who over-edit you work
• Don't buy a pre-written essay! Colleges can tell, and it'll make your whole application sound false.

Ready to start working on your essay? Check out our explanation of the point of the personal essay and the role it plays on your applications and then explore our step-by-step guide to writing a great college essay .

Using the Common Application for your college applications? We have an excellent guide to the Common App essay prompts and useful advice on how to pick the Common App prompt that's right for you . Wondering how other people tackled these prompts? Then work through our roundup of over 130 real college essay examples published by colleges .

Stressed about whether to take the SAT again before submitting your application? Let us help you decide how many times to take this test . If you choose to go for it, we have the ultimate guide to studying for the SAT to give you the ins and outs of the best ways to study.

Anna scored in the 99th percentile on her SATs in high school, and went on to major in English at Princeton and to get her doctorate in English Literature at Columbia. She is passionate about improving student access to higher education.

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11 Best Editing and Proofreading Services in 2024

#scribendiinc

Written by  Scribendi

As a writer, it's not always easy to find typos or spelling errors in your own work. 

However, online editing services make error-free writing easy so you can focus on writing, not editing.

Below, we've listed the top 11 best editing and proofreading services for 2024 while considering years of experience, turnaround times, pricing, and quality. 

What Is the Difference Between Editing and Proofreading? 

Many people will hire a proofreader when they are really looking for an editor, and vice versa. However, editing and proofreading have different functions, and you will need one or the other depending on the requirements of your document. 

With editing services , your editor will: 

• Focus on improving the flow of language
• Check the overall readability
• Verify the accuracy of language
• Ensure the content follows a logical order
• Make sure your transitions are clear
• Verify that every paragraph is relevant to the overall argument
• Determine whether the tone fits the audience
• Ensure gendered language is used properly

With proofreading services , your proofreader will: 

• Check for grammatical errors
• Point out mechanical mistakes, such as misspelled words
• Correct missing or incorrect punctuation
• Verify correct and consistent capitalization 
• Fix sentence structure errors, such as run-on sentences or fragments

If you want in-depth feedback and revisions to improve your writing, editing is what you need.

If you need a final check to ensure your document is error free, proofreading is what you need.

What to Look for When Hiring an Editing or Proofreading Service

When hiring an editing or proofreading service, there are a few things to keep in mind!

Editor Qualifications

Experience and education play a large role in selecting the right editor or proofreader. You want to work with someone who is qualified, who has expertise doing the type of editing you're looking for, and who has had satisfied customers in the past. 

Check each service's ratings on review sites to ensure their customer satisfaction levels match what the service promises.

An editing or proofreading sample can give you an excellent idea of what to expect from your editor. Samples may be free or paid and allow you to evaluate the quality of an editing or proofreading service.

Communication

Good communication is also crucial. Will you be able to ask your editor questions during or after the process? 

The goal of any editor is to help you develop your best work, so clear communication throughout the process is key.

You might be wondering what is a fair price to pay for proofreading. Professional proofreading rates vary, and so does quality. To get the best-value proofreading, you will need to find a reputable proofreading company.

Read More: How Much Does Proofreading Cost?

11 Best Editing and Proofreading Services for 2024

1. scribendi.

Since 1997, Scribendi has been providing high-quality editing and proofreading services to students, academics, and authors from around the world. 

An ISO-certified industry leader in editing and proofreading services, Scribendi has a global team of hand-picked editors, many of whom hold master's degrees and PhDs. The onboarding process for new editors at Scribendi is intentionally rigorous so that only the highest-quality editors are selected—around 5% of all applicants. 

With Scribendi, you can expect affordable services and turnarounds in as little as 2 hours. The type of content Scribendi edits ranges from websites and blogs to essays and personal documents, with many other document types in between. Scribendi offers extensive feedback to its clients to help them develop their best work.

On the Scribendi website, you can also find case studies and reviews , along with a breakdown of how Scribendi customizes each service to specific clients. 

Fastest turnaround time for 1,000 words: 2 hours

Number of years in business: 25+

Free sample: Yes, 1,000-word free sample for editing or proofreading

ISO certified: Yes

Account deposit feature: Yes

Competitive Advantages

When it comes to fast turnaround times, affordable services, and professional, high-quality revisions, Scribendi has a competitive advantage over many other editing services.

With 25+ years' experience, their 480+ editors are available to proofread academic essays, novels, business materials, personal documents, or student essays 24/7, 365 days a year. 

Polish Your Writing with Our Book Proofreading Service

2. proof-reading-service.com.

Proof-Reading-Service.com offers high-quality English editing and proofreading services exclusively for professionals in science and academia. 

An England-based company, the proofreaders at Proof-Reading-Service.com are native English speakers with experience in various academic disciplines. Each proofreader on their team is personally selected and holds at least a master's degree, so their academic clients are fully supported.

The types of editing they help with range from journal and scientific editing to PhD thesis and manuscript editing. Since their specialty is in science and academia, this service would be most helpful to professors, lecturers, post-doctoral researchers, and research students.

Proof-Reading-Service.com offers a flat rate per 1,000 words. This rate does not change based on the type of content, so you always know how much proofreading will cost you.  

Fastest turnaround time for 1,000 words: No instant quote

Number of years in business: 16

Free sample: No

ISO certified: No

An affordable option for academics and scientists, Proof-Reading-Services.com offers highly educated editors with expertise in many fields. 

Fiverr is a marketplace for digital services that allows buyers and sellers to work with each other through Fiverr's transactional platform. 

Through Fiverr, many freelance proofreaders offer their services at different rates and turnaround times. Within the platform, editing services can be filtered by budget, delivery time, and content type.

You can also sift through the profiles of freelance editors, read their reviews, and learn about their history with editing and with Fiverr itself. Each editor offers different rates depending on their experience and turnaround time.

Fastest turnaround time for 1,000 words: N/A

Number of years in business: 12

Account deposit feature: Yes (for Fiverr Business users)

With Fiverr, you have the flexibility to choose a specific editor, and many niche options are available. The process is simple and easy, and each transaction is made through the Fiverr platform.

4. True Editors

True Editors offers professional editing services for academics, business owners, authors, and job applicants.

Their editing team is composed of engineers, research scholars, postgraduates, physicians, and even journal peer reviewers. Each editor on the True Editors team receives specialized training in academic editing and must take a language proficiency exam to qualify for their editing team.

To use True Editors' services, you can upload a file or enter your word count and choose your turnaround time. Their pricing varies by word count, and their website provides editing samples so you can get a feel for their editing style. If you're ever unhappy with their work, they also offer a free revision of your document.   

Fastest turnaround time for 1,000 words: 4 hours

Number of years in business: 10+

Free sample: 300 words or less for editing

True Editors has editors with specific subject-matter expertise.

5. ProofreadingPal

Operating out of Iowa City, IA, ProofreadingPal is an editing service that utilizes a two-proofreader model. This means that two proofreaders work on every piece of content ordered through their service.

ProofreadingPal offers editing services for students, professionals, and authors, including academic editing for writing styles such as APA, Chicago, MLA, or CSE. Their services are available 24/7, 365 days per year, with turnaround times ranging from 30 minutes to 7 days.

What also makes this service unique is that they accept orders both online and by phone, and their customer service team is available every day from 8 a.m. to 10 p.m. CT. They offer free sample edits of up to 400 words, and they don't have a minimum word requirement if you'd like to submit a small document for review.  

Fastest turnaround time for 1,000 words: 1.5 hours

Free sample: 400 words or less for editing

With ProofreadingPal, you get two proofreaders reviewing every submission instead of one and quick turnaround times. 

6. PaperTrue

PaperTrue started in 2014 as an editing service but has since expanded its services to include essay writing, formatting, and plagiarism checking for students, as well as cover design, typesetting, and online distribution for authors.

Operating with the belief that language shouldn't be a barrier to success, PaperTrue helps a global audience of businesses, authors, and researchers edit their writing so they're able to reach their full potential. To date, they've served over 52,000 clients and have 4.5+ stars on review sites, including Google Reviews and Sitejabber. 

PaperTrue also offers a three-step quality checking process and hand-picked, qualified editors for each document reviewed. With locations in the US, Singapore, the UK, and India, they offer round-the-clock editing services with a turnaround time of 12 hours for documents up to 6,000 words. 

Fastest turnaround time for 1,000 words: 12 hours

Number of years in business: 8

With PaperTrue, you get not only editing and proofreading services but publication services as well, including typesetting, cover design, and online distribution.

Proofed is an editing and formatting service that helps students, businesses, authors, academics, researchers, and other professionals communicate effectively. Its mission is to provide the highest quality proofreading and editing services in the world.

With a diverse group of editors, the team at Proofed offers extensive knowledge on nearly every subject. All editors have undergone Proofreading Academy training, a course developed by Proofed, to ensure the highest standard of editing possible. 

Proofed offers speedy delivery (up to 10,000 edited words within 24 hours), with express and rapid turnaround times that range from 2 to 12 hours for select word counts. Their system supports over 15 different document formats, which makes the submission process easy, and their team offers 24-hour support.

Fastest turnaround time for 1,000 words: 2 hours  

Free sample: 500 words for proofreading only

ISO certified: Yes 

Account deposit feature: No

Proofed offers proofreading expertise in many fields, as well as formatting services.

Enago provides 24/7 editing services for the global research community. More than just a team of editors, Enago works with researchers in over 125 countries to help them publish their work in international journals. 

With end-to-end publication support services, such as pre-submission peer review, journal selection, and post-submission review, Enago also offers competitive quality assurance with unlimited edits and a money-back guarantee for manuscripts that are rejected due to language issues.  

Enago's editors all hold a PhD or master's degree, and they have an average of 19.4 years of academic editing experience. Each manuscript is assigned to an editor with similar subject area expertise, assuring high-level accuracy. 

Like ProofreadingPal, Enago also operates on a two-editor model, where all manuscripts are reviewed by no fewer than two native English-speaking editors. 

Fastest turnaround time for 1,000 words: 24 hours

Number of years in business: 17

Enago offers highly educated editors in the fields of science, academia, and business, along with help and support during the academic publication process. 

American Journal Experts (AJE) offers in-depth scientific and academic editing services, in addition to translation and manuscript formatting services, to help researchers publish their best work. Its mission is to improve the exchange of discoveries in the international research community by identifying opportunities to improve the research, publishing, and discovery cycle.  

In addition to providing quality editing services, their team of PhDs supports researchers when they have questions regarding manuscript submission and publishing. AJE also matches each manuscript with an editor who is a subject-matter expert. 

Prices and turnaround times, as well as more in-depth information regarding the details of each type of editing offered (standard, advanced, or premium), can be found on the AJE website. 

Fastest turnaround time for 1,000 words: 48 hours  

Number of years in business: 18

Free sample: Editing of up to 500 words for an abstract

AJE's editors have subject-matter expertise, and the service also offers translation and formatting services. 

10. Editage

Editage partners with researchers to offer advanced and premium editing as well as publication support and translation services. Their goal is to assure the publication success of hopeful researchers, scholars, and students. 

Each document submitted to Editage is assigned to an editor who best matches the content subject matter. Editage even offers the option to select your expert, price, deadline, and style, so researchers have full control of the service they receive. Researchers can also collaborate with their editing expert to ensure the paper follows their vision. 

Editage also has local language support, turnaround times of as little as eight hours, and a two-step revision process for quality. Their team of over 2,000 native English editors has publication expertise and covers over 1,000 subjects.  

Fastest turnaround time for 1,000 words: 8 hours

Number of years in business: 20

At Editage, two editors review every submission. They also offer client-to-editor Q&A interaction and translation services.

LetPub offers editorial services for researchers in the scholarly publishing community. In addition to editing, LetPub offers scientific illustration services, plain language summaries, and graphic and video abstracts. 

The LetPub team is composed of experts and senior editors who come from a wide range of disciplines, each one a native English speaker with experience editing both scientific and technical documents. The types of editing included in LetPub's services range from grant and language editing to response letter and scientific editing. 

Because many of LetPub's editors and staff have research backgrounds, they're familiar with the level of effort it takes to write a paper for publication, and they will reedit a paper at no cost if it is rejected for language reasons.

Fastest turnaround time for 1,000 words: 48 hours

ISO certified: Yes (for translation services)

Competitive Advantages 

LetPub offers expertise in science for scientists and academics, as well as translation and formatting services. 

Perfect Your Writing with High-Quality Academic Proofreading

There's a lot to consider when choosing an editing service. Save our table as a quick reference for your next document.

As long as you understand the important factors that go into choosing a great editing service, like experience, customer satisfaction, and quality, you'll be well equipped to choose the right one for you.

About the Author

Scribendi's in-house editors work with writers from all over the globe to perfect their writing. They know that no piece of writing is complete without a professional edit, and they love to see a good piece of writing turn into a great one after the editing process. Scribendi's in-house editors are unrivaled in both experience and education, having collectively edited millions of words and obtained nearly 20 degrees collectively. They love consuming caffeinated beverages, reading books of various genres, and relaxing in quiet, dimly lit spaces.

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Online Video Editor

The online video editor that helps you create faster

Kapwing is a full-featured video creator with intuitive tools designed for fast edits and effortless collaboration.

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• Online video maker. Edit your videos with our fast, powerful video editor. Accessible for beginners, feature-rich for pros. Available on any device.
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