Student/Academic FAQ

Help! I need to hand this in by ____ or I'm toast. How can I get a fast turnaround?

For short documents (3,000 words or less) we offer a Same-Day/Overnight service, which returns your document in less than 8 hours. If you send us your document at 1 a.m., we can work on it while you sleep and get it back to you by 9 a.m.! Click here for details.

Can you write me an essay on the War of 1812 or the DNA of Dolly the Sheep by tomorrow?

Sorry, but no. Scribendi.com does not write or sell academic work. We strongly believe that students should submit their own, original work.

Please? What if I gave you an outline to work from, or wrote the first half, or...?

Sorry, still no. We will edit, proofread and help you improve what you have, but you must give us a complete draft of your own paper to work with.

Would you write up my thesis or dissertation if I gave you all my research notes?

No, we can't do that either. We can give your academic work a thorough content edit to help you strengthen the work before you submit it to your review committee, but we need to see a complete draft.

I'm good at understanding work, but terrible at expressing myself. Can you help?

As long as you've got a complete paper we can work with, and have chosen one of our editing services, we can suggest revisions and help you improve your writing, organization and structure.

Do you guarantee I'll get a passing grade and/or better mark if I use your service?

We can tell you that your writing, spelling and grammar will be better if you use our proofreading service. We can help you with our content editing service by pointing out weaknesses in your arguments or areas that you need to do more research on. But ultimately your final grade will depend on how much research and effort you put into the paper, and what your instructor requires from you.

I need help with making sure this conforms to APA 5th Edition, MLA, Turabian, Chicago Manual of Style, etc.

No problem. Just make sure you choose an editing service which includes a formatting help option and tell us what style manual we should refer to. You can find a complete list of our academic services here.

How do I get a word count for my manuscript?

See our How Do I...? FAQ.

I submitted a MS Word file and now I have all your revisions and suggestions highlighted in red. How do I integrate these changes quickly?

See our How Do I...? FAQ.

I submitted an MS Word file, and I have my document back, but I can't see what you've changed. Why is that?

It may be that you have the Highlight Changes feature turned off. In Word/Office XP, there's a menu drop-down on the upper left of your screen - change that to the option that says "Final Showing Markup." In older versions of Word/Office, go to the Tools menu, select Track Changes, and make sure Highlight Changes on Screen is checked. If you still don't see any changes, contact customer service.

I submitted a file type other than MS Word, and I have my document back, but I can't see what you've changed. Why is that?

Unfortunately, very few word processing programs have anything similar to Word's "Track Changes" feature, which allows our editors and proofreaders to highlight changes in red so you can see them more easily. For the time being, the best way to see what we've changed is to open your original document beside the revised document and flip back and forth between the two. Our staff will have summarized their changes in their notes back to you as well.