In a normal proofreading process, an editor will read through a text, closely and in detail, to check for errors in spelling, grammar, formulation and style. The main aims are clarity, consistency and conciseness. A proofreader will, for instance, check that your text doesn’t switch between US- and UK-English spelling conventions or between different formulations of the date (“01.01.19” or “the 1st of January 2109”). A long-winded construction like “In Diagram 3, it is shown…” will generally be corrected to “Diagram 3 shows…” and the editor will try to help you avoid overusing words: if you have “different” in consecutive sentences, he or she might replace it with “various”, “diverse”, “a range/variety/wealth of” in the second sentence, and so on. Your text will be revised but not substantially rewritten. Our job is to enhance your words to make them readable and to give that extra polish and sparkle to the way you express yourself.

Scientific editing differs from "normal" editing for publishers, authors and companies in that primarily technical material from the fields of research and science is proofread, edited and checked for errors and ambiguity.

Alongside professors and research directors, clients of our scientific editing service mainly comprise pre- and post-graduate students writing their Bachelor’s, Master’s or PhD theses as well as students working on dissertations or seminar notes who need their assignments and essays read through for mistakes or infelicities of style.

Do I need scientific/technical proofreading?

There are many reasons why we recommend scientific or technical proofreading, for example:
 

For businesses:

This is especially valuable when many people work on an extended text, like a technical report or an advertising booklet, and where inconsistencies often creep in. Someone may write “bureaux”, “sub-region”, “won’t” or “economy-sized” and another “bureaus”, “subregion”, “will not” or “economy sized”. Revising a long text can result in team members losing an overview. In German this is known as “Betriebsblindheit” or “operational blindness” – in English we say there are too many cooks in the kitchen, or that someone “can’t see the wood for the trees”. Often an objective eye is crucial: the person who can step back from a text and provide an overview of its entirety.

We at HFL will go through your text and make sure your report consistently expresses what you want to say without the risk of different formulations distracting the reader. Is someone writing „organisation“ (i.e. UK-English spelling with German-style quotation marks?) while another is using “organization” (US-English spelling with English-style quotation marks)? Is the text always aligned to the right (or always unaligned), and are the font sizes and indentations in subtitles consistent all the way through? Is the boss using too many semicolons and her assistant over-hyphenating? This attention to detail can only come from an editor tasked with considering a text as a whole. And when a proofreader does his or her job well, you won’t notice – your writing will be polished but look natural and the themes and arguments you put across will not be essentially changed.

For students:
 

Improving your grades:
When you’re writing your final degree paper, you need to show you can work on a topic independently, to a predetermined deadline and using the proper methodology. Candidates usually manage to tackle their subject in-depth, but they often lose marks through mistakes in spelling and punctuation or a bad writing style, or through repetition, irrelevant subject matter, omission of related material or errors in their conclusions. We step in to help you improve your grades.
 

Safeguarding you from accusations of plagiarism:
Students are increasingly hearing about someone who has failed their final examination due to allegations of plagiarism. Before they hand in their final paper, students worry that they themselves will face these charges. These accusations are generally made either when there is a “one-to-one” correspondence between their work and another’s or when academic material has not been properly referenced.

To insure you against this, we put your final thesis, if you wish, through a strict process of plagiarism control using special software. We provide marginal comments at those points in your thesis that don’t seem to have come wholly from you and which lack a proper reference.

Improving readability for the examiner:
Bear in mind your examiner, who must read not only your paper but those of many others as well. Inconsistent or erroneous punctuation can make it hard for the reader to get a feel for what’s written. “Come on, let’s eat, Gran” is easier to digest than “Come on, let’s eat Gran”. Imagine what that would mean for the far more complex sentences in your thesis. We’re here to iron out those wrinkles before your examiner tries on the finished product.
 

Detecting discrepancies BEFORE the oral examination (viva voce):
Imagine you’ve been preparing for a face-to-face defence of your written work. You know it back to front. But the examiner has misunderstood one of your points or lines of argument because you’re describing it ambiguously or unclearly. What you’ve written makes perfect sense in your own head because you know the background and context, but in your text you haven’t been precise enough in laying out connections and interrelationships. Your examiner has been following a different line of reasoning or has misunderstood a point, and asks you something about your work that you were unprepared for. We help you sidestep these potential stumbling blocks by spotting discrepancies and letting you know where they occur.

Is scientific/technical proofreading legal?

Certainly. We’re aware it’s your signature that confirms the work as yours. We copy-edit and proofread what you’ve written; we don’t write it for you. That’s the realm of ghostwriting – not our territory. The field of your Bachelor’s or Master’s thesis, homework or doctoral dissertation is for you and your supervisor to map out. You’re responsible for the content of your work, and that includes the footnotes. We take charge of copy-editing and proofreading, thereby enhancing your text and drawing your attention to inconsistencies, while you decide whether you want to incorporate or reject our suggested changes.

Universities recommend editing and lecturers urge you to get your dissertations corrected so that their job of going through your work becomes swifter, more straightforward and simpler.

• The Free University of Berlin, for instance, recommends editing and proofing on its website “Tips for Bachelor’s Degree Work”.
• Munich’s Ludwig-Maximilian University advises, “As well as friends, fellow students and relatives, you can also ask a professional to proofread and edit your work.”
• From the Vienna University of Economics and Business: “We strongly recommend that you seek someone who can read your work for corrections – if possible the content too, with regard to grammar and formulas. Get feedback from people unfamiliar with your subject area to ensure the thesis is clearly structured and comprehensible.” 

Why are we your best choice for scientific/technical proofreading?

References

We’re pretty confident that our references speak for themselves. We’ve spent years working regularly and intensively with a broad range of clients from different professional backgrounds, and have proofread economic, political and scientific reports as well as helping to prepare academic theses up to post-doctoral level for publishing. From restaurant menus to funding proposals for start-ups, transcribing and editing interviews with politicians, journalists and cultural figures, we guarantee a detailed, discreet, collaborative and sensitive approach to your texts to enhance every facet of what you really want to say.

And our clients come back to us again and again. Our team of qualified and experienced editors – always mother-tongue native speakers when it comes to non-German texts – makes sure your original material is at the heart of our work. We know how much effort you’ve put in, and we’re only too pleased to supplement that with our editorial know-how. So please take the time to glance through our references: evidence that we too can be a valuable part of your work.

How much do the different proofreading packages cost?

Please find out more about our prices by following this link.

By all means. To make it easier for you to decide on the basis of our work, you have the opportunity to send up to two A4 pages of text which we’ll be happy to proofread and correct for you, absolutely free of charge. This will also enable you to see the layout in which our suggestions and amendments are presented to you in the document you send.

You’ll always receive an invoice from us with your name, address, the type of proofreading package you requested, the payment amount and the relevant bank details. It’s generally easier for us to be paid by direct bank transfer. In certain cases (if you want to pay over the weekend or if you live in a country outside the Single European Payment Area [SEPA]), we also accept payment via PayPal.

Please note that, to protect ourselves from possible fraud, we generally ask private (that is, non-business) clients for the full remuneration with invoices below €500. For sums larger than this amount, we generally ask for 50% pre-payment.

How do I commission a scientific/technical proofreading package for my work?

Please contact:
 

E-Mail:  info@hauptstadtstudio-freier-lektoren.de

Telephone:  (030) 755 41 38 - 9

Contact person: Mr Frank Elminowski, Business graduate / Parliamentary stenographer / Editor and proofreader