Which Editing Service Do You Need?
The Ultimate Guide to Scribendi Services
With over 30 professional services, Scribendi helps writers, researchers, students, and businesses perfect their documents with expert editing, proofreading, and formatting support. Whether you're polishing a dissertation, preparing a novel for publication, or refining website content, this ultimate guide explains all of Scribendi's services—so you can choose the one that's right for your document.
At first glance, it might be hard to pick the editing or proofreading service that best suits your work. Whether you have an abstract, research article, admissions essay, letter, or book, we can lend a helping hand. You'll find that Scribendi does more than editing and proofreading: We also offer unique services, such as formatting for ebooks, critique and query package creation for completed manuscripts, and publication support for scientific research.
In this guide to Scribendi's products, we'll describe the differences between editing and proofreading, outline how we can offer targeted support for ESL writers, and break down our different service offerings.
What's the Difference Between Editing and Proofreading?
Which Editing Service Is Right for You?
Business & Corporate Editing Services
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What's the Difference Between Editing and Proofreading?
Unsure whether to select an editing or proofreading service for your work? We've outlined some central differences that distinguish our editing and proofreading processes to help you choose the appropriate service for perfecting your writing.
|
Editing |
Proofreading |
|
More intensive revisions for early drafts |
Typically the final step after editing is completed |
|
More engaged editorial commentary concerning logic, meaning, clarity, development, and structure |
Less in-depth commentary, with greater focus on consistency and mechanical details |
|
Significant rewrites by the author may be necessary after editing |
Major rewrites should be complete before proofreading |
|
Major changes for restructuring and shortening the text occur at this stage |
Changes appear minor (but are still meaningful) at this stage: punctuation, mechanics, grammar, spelling, consistency |
| Choose editing if ... | Choose proofreading if ... |
| you're still revising or planning to add content | your draft is final |
| your arguments and flow feel disconnected or choppy | you want corrections only for grammar, typos, punctuation, and consistency |
| you're getting feedback that your writing is "unclear" or "needs structure" | your formatting is already complete |
| you want comments and suggestions about improving the diction, logic, organization, and development of your writing | you don't want extensive critical commentary |
If you're still unsure, choose editing. Proofreading is meant for final drafts.
That way, your editor will be on the lookout for issues and the work will be more comprehensive (and you can decline changes that you consider too extensive). Best of all, the price of your order does not change depending on whether you select editing or proofreading within the same service category. If specific instructions about the depth of engagement are not provided, our editors typically work according to the needs of the document rather than whether editing or proofreading was selected.
Take a look at this student-written summary of Catcher in the Rye and compare the editor's work in the edited version and the proofread version:
Why Human Editors Matter
Although AI may seem like a useful tool for improving grammar and language, we advise against its unsupervised use for translating and editing ESL texts. AI is simply unable to do what human editors can, and it can have the following negative effects on your writing:
- Erases personal style and nuance, especially in ESL fiction writing
- Changes the intended meaning: If a document has been Google translated, this can become a game of telephone, which can make your ideas unrecognizable and incoherent.
- Alters idioms and cultural references, making writing sound awkward or inappropriate for the context
- Fails to provide explanations for edits or ask questions about unclear text; such explanations can be essential for the client to make the correct choice or change.
- Struggles with specialized writing: It can mess up citation formatting and terminology or make the text sound too casual or too formal.
- Gives false confidence in the quality and accuracy of the work
- Misunderstands ESL writers' instructions
At Scribendi, we guarantee that all editorial work is performed and overseen by human editors. Learn about our clear policies on generative AI use and our predictive tool (built in house!), which highlight human oversight when using AI.
Our Approach to ESL Editing
Scribendi editors have years of experience working with ESL clients from around the world, including Finland, Türkiye, Saudi Arabia, and China. We know how hard it can be to express yourself in another language, but your ideas deserve to reach and resonate with a wide audience.
Our approach to editing ESL documents aims to be fair, clear, effective, and supportive:
- Speaking a different first language results in different English errors. We understand the common errors and challenges that ESL writers face, such as difficulty with word choice and idiomatic expressions, differences in sentence structure between languages, article use and prepositions, verb tense consistency, and maintaining an academic or professional tone.
- The price doesn't increase for ESL services, but it is helpful for our editors to know that the document was written by an ESL author.
- We encourage ESL clients to provide detailed instructions: This is your opportunity to tell us about issues of concern, word count limits, previous feedback you received, your intended audience or publication, and key terms that shouldn't be changed.
- We are committed to maintaining the meaning of your writing, and we aim to avoid overcorrecting your work.
- Our comments are geared to the ESL writer: We use clear language to ask relevant questions that can help you understand what needs to be changed in your document.
Try ESL Academic Editing:
Support your ideas with clear,
correct, and confident English
Which Editing Service Is Right for You?
Academic Editing Services
Scribendi offers a range of services for academic editing and research support. Depending on which one you choose, the level of support and engagement, benefits, prices, and turnaround times will vary. Our Academic services cover a range of document types, including but not limited to essays, journal articles, theses or dissertations, abstracts, proposals, research projects, and midterm or final papers.
Depending on your needs, we can check citations, references, and formatting for style guide requirements in addition to our standard editing, proofreading, and in-depth commentary offerings.
Are you enrolled in high school, college, or university? We offer a 10% student discount for our Admissions Essay Editing and Proofreading and Student Essay Editing and Proofreading services.
Creative Editing Services
Whether you have a short story that's in its early stages or a manuscript that's ready to be combed through for consistency, our editors are comfortable working in a range of genres and understand the importance of preserving your authorial voice. In addition to our editing and proofreading services for creative writing, unique services such as Book Critique and Query Package Creation are designed for authors and creatives seeking support for narrative development and publishing.
Personal Editing Services
Complaint letters, emails, cover letters, social media posts, letters of recommendation, and rejection letters—these are just a few examples of the types of messages our editors can improve in our Personal Document Editing and Proofreading services.
Business & Corporate Editing Services
While some business documents must be written collaboratively, their message, tone, and logic can easily become inconsistent and unclear as a result. Everyone's input matters, but too many perspectives can make the content difficult to follow or even contradictory.
Do you have an important presentation coming up, weekly blog posts to review, or a series of proposals to finalize? Before you share your work with shareholders, colleagues, or the general public, it should be clear and consistent. Correct grammar and polished language are key to showing others that you (and your organization) are a reliable and credible source.
Scribendi's custom Corporate Services are designed to meet the needs of organizations in every sector, including marketing and sales, education, healthcare, government, hospitality, and real estate.
Try Scribendi Risk-Free
Making the decision to work with an editor isn't always easy, which is why Scribendi offers a Free Sample service for new clients. If you haven't worked with us before, you can request a sample for any genre: Academic articles, book manuscripts, and essays are just a few examples of the documents we'll work on for free. Get a preview of how we can take your text from good to great without any cost or commitment. We're here to help you succeed as a writer!
Our Free Sample service includes the following:
- Expert language editing for 500 words of the document of your choice: We'll take care of grammar and spelling errors, unclear or awkward phrasing, and unneeded repetition.
- Commentary to help you further shape and develop your text: Your editor will point out where your argument could be strengthened or where your readers might find gaps in your logic, narrative, or character development.
Still not sure?
Our Customer Support team is
happy to answer your questions
Related Posts
Which Academic Editing Service Do You Need?
Choose the best Scribendi academic editing service for your document. Learn about our editing, proofreading, and review service options for journal articles, theses, dissertations, abstracts, proposals, and other forms of academic and research writing.
Which Business Editing Service Do You Need?
Choose the best Scribendi business editing service for your document. Learn about our editing, proofreading, and review service options for press releases, proposal, presentations, business plans, websites, blog content, ad copy, and other forms of business writing.
Which Creative Editing Service Do You Need?
Choose the best Scribendi creative editing service for your document. Learn about our editing, proofreading, and review service options for fiction, nonfiction, memoirs, short stories, scripts, and other creative works.
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