Proofreading Berlin
English Proofreading

Bachelor's or Master's final degree project, homework, notes and materials for seminars and exams, diploma, dessertation or PhD thesis; we provide a full range of academic, technical, business and personal editing services to ensure your texts are clear, concise and relevant. 

Package 1: Proofreading "light"

Package 2: Proofreading "BASIC"

Package 3: Proofreading "COMPLETE" (recommended)

1.) Proofreading "light" – from €6.00 per standard page - (€5.00 for students)

With this package, we check your use of words and the language forms in which you express yourself, but we don't make changes to the content of your text. Corrections and suggestions are included in the "Revision Mode" on your document.

This procedure involves optimising your:

orthography (spelling in UK- or US-English), grammar, punctuation, syntax (or sentence structure), hyphenation and typography (non-breaking spaces as well as hyphens and dashes).

We also make sure your spellings are standardised (or 'standardized'!), for example with regard to:

technical terms, German and English phrases, open and closed inverted commas, footnotes, abbreviations, proper citation format, older and newer forms of spelling.

2.) Proofreading "BASIC" – from €7.00 per standard page - (€5.50 for students)

This comprises the standard service mentioned above, with an additional service that helps you in:

improving and optimising your language and expression, reviewing overall coherence (how your text hangs together as a whole), tweaking, if necessary, your general style.

3.) Proofreading "COMPLETE" – from €8.00 per standard page - (€6.00 for students)

This builds on the services offered in the previous two packages, with these additional reviewing tools:

conciseness of titles and chapter headings, matching of table of contents with page numbers and chapter headings, checking that terms and acronyms are clearly described and included in a glossary or list of abbreviations, comprehensibility, plausibility and logic of arguments, rigour with which you articulate and develop your arguments, validity of method and approach.

Our suggestions for improving your work appear in Word in the inset column at the side of your text.

Are you thinking of having your Bachelor thesis, Master thesis or PhD dissertation checked and edited by our proofreading service in Berlin? Our Berlin-based proofreading service proofreads academic theses – Bachelor theses, Master theses and PhD dissertations – from a wide range of research- and science-related fields. Our clients are mainly students who need their theses corrected. Our customers come not only from Berlin, but from all over Germany as well as Austria and Switzerland, Europe and further afield.

For academic proofreading, we only use editors who have themselves graduated with a university degree – in other words, those who have the necessary technical and scientific expertise. In addition, our proofreaders are all experienced in editing and, where necessary, summarising academic texts for publication. And, of course, with our academic proofreading services, we always make sure to keep an eye on the referencing and citation conventions that you (as well as publishers and academic institutions) prefer.

For a top-quality academic proofreading of your Bachelor thesis, Master thesis, diploma assignment, examination paper, PhD dissertation or term paper, you can choose from three service packages that make up our academic editing service:

*1 standard page = 1,600 characters
 

With the service Package 1, the Academic proofreading “light”, your text is only corrected with regard to its linguistic layout; we don’t make corrections when it comes to the content. The corrections are incorporated directly in Word’s revision mode.

Our service Academic proofreading “light” includes checking and correcting orthography (spelling), grammar, punctuation, syntax (sentence structure), hyphenation, typography (hyphens, dashes, the consistent use and appearance of single or double quotation marks, and so on). In addition, our proofreaders keep an eagle eye out for inconsistencies – ensuring uniform spelling, for example, of technical terms, (in either UK- or US-English), prefixes and suffixes, footnotes, abbreviations, citations, old and new spelling etc.

Our service Package 2, Academic proofreading “BASIC”, includes all the services of our proofreading service package “light”. The following services are also included in our “BASIC” proofreading service package: correcting language use and expression, checking that your points are clear and your arguments cohesive, and providing suggestions for correcting or tweaking aspects of your written style.

Our service Package 3, Academic proofreading “COMPLETE”, naturally includes the other two service packages, but on top of this offer we also check the following: the precision, conciseness and relevance of titles, subtitles and chapter headings, the consistency of the table of contents, page numbering and chapter headings, the comprehensibility, plausibility and logic of your reasoning, the robustness of your argument and the validity of your methodologies and approach.

In addition to proofreading, with our academic proofreading service package “COMPLETE” we also include suggestions for improvement in the margins of your thesis, using Word’s ‘Comment’ function.

Academic/Scientific Proofreading

Would you like to have your PhD dissertation (or doctoral thesis) proofread by our editing service? Our academic proofreading service in Berlin will proofread and edit your dissertation.

If you’re thinking about a professional proofreading for your dissertation, you can choose from the following three service packages:

*1 standard page = 1,600 characters
 

Our first package (Proofreading “light”) is perhaps less suitable as an editing option as it may treat your PhD dissertation too superficially. You should only choose our proofreading service package “light” when your dissertation has already been “waved through” but you’d nevertheless prefer to have it proofread to avoid the risk of final errors being missed before your dissertation is eventually printed, bound and (possibly) published.

Our proofreading service package “light” includes: the correction of orthography (spelling), grammar, punctuation, syntax (sentence structure), hyphenation, typography (hyphenation, dashes, quote marks and apostrophes, for instance). In addition, the proofreading process ensures uniform spelling, for example, of technical terms (whether in UK- or US-English), prefixes and suffixes, footnotes, abbreviations, citations, old and new spellings, etc.

Our proofreading service package “BASIC” includes everything we offer in our proofreading “light” service package, but also provides further features. The following services are added to the proofreading service package “BASIC”: correction of language and expression, checking for coherence and comprehensibility in your written arguments, and ensuring your style of expression is clear and appropriate for your intended readers.

Our proofreading service package “COMPLETE” is our most popular offering and we strongly recommend this comprehensive service. It of course includes the two proofreading service packages “light” and “BASIC”, but in addition the following aspects of your text are checked: the conciseness of titles and chapter headings, the consistency of the table of contents, page numbering and chapter headings, the comprehensibility, plausibility and logic of your reasoning, how well your arguments hang together and the validity of your methodologies and overall approach.

Please note: In addition to proofreading, we only include suggestions for improvement (or perhaps a recommended re-phrasing) in the margins of your dissertation in our proofreading service package “COMPLETE”, using Word’s ‘Comment’ function. These marginal comments often include hints or questions to help strengthen the arguments you’re putting forward in your PhD dissertation.

Academic/Scientific Proofreading

Our Berlin transcription team transcribes both from original presentations and from dictated material – analogue and digital, depending on the dictation system. Digital recording, further processing and transmission do not require physical proximity; you can just send us the audio data by e-mail (normally in the form of an mp4 file) or via WeTransfer or the cloud when you want to send larger amounts of data.

Our Berlin writing service transcribes verbatim transcripts, interviews, meetings, hearings, discussion rounds, dictations, expert opinions, consultants’ letters, reports on findings, admission and discharge reports, expert reports, discussion rounds, meetings or online conferences. We can also provide subtitling services for filmed conferences and events.

Our clients are companies, law firms, notaries, patent attorneys, court appraisers, medical institutions and care centres, insurance agencies, reinsurers, specialist medical practices, and other organisations – clients we’ve worked with are based not only in Berlin but across Germany, Austria, Switzerland and further afield.

What services do we offer in the field of transcription?

With us you can choose from 3 service packages:

Package 1: "Word for Word"

Package 2: "OPTIMISED" (includes our proofreading service package “BASIC”)

Package 3: "COMPLETE" (an editorially revised word protocol that also includes our proofreading service package “COMPLETE”)

1) Transcription “Word for Word” – from €50.00 per 15 minutes

With our transcription service package “Word for Word”, our proofreading service in Berlin transcribes the spoken word – in other words, any verbatim speech. The transcription neither optimises the linguistic layout nor corrects the content.

The transcription service package “Word for Word” includes an accurate written record of:

• literal speech
• orthography (spelling)
• punctuation
• hyphenation
• typography (hyphens, dashes and quotation marks, for example
• paralanguage (hesitations and pauses, if necessary)

In addition, we pay especial attention to uniform spelling conventions for terminology relating to:

• technical terms
• UK- or US-English usage
• proper nouns, diacritics and naming conventions (for example, ‘Beijing’ rather than ‘Peking’, or ‘Chernobyl’ instead of Tchernobyl’)
• abbreviations
• old and new spelling

2) Transcription “Optimised” – from €75.00 per 15 minutes (also offered in English)

With our transcription service package “Optimised”, our proofreading service in Berlin includes everything we provide in our “Word for Word” transcription service package. However, on top of this, with the transcription service package “Optimised”, we enhance the following aspects of the written version of your verbatim text:

• grammar
• syntax (sentence structure)
• expression
• style

3) Transcription “COMPLETE” (edited verbatim transcript) – from €100.00 per 15 minutes.*

Our transcription service package “COMPLETE” includes all the features offered in the transcription service packages “Word for Word” and “Optimised”.

In addition, we offer the following:

• If required, our presence on site/participation in the meeting
• Listing of speakers (order) and attendees
• Capturing of heckling and other unforeseen contributions
• Use of your format template
• Formatting of the text according to your specifications
• Accurate reproduction of the spoken word in terms of subject matter and content
• Revision of the text for comprehensibility, coherence, plausibility and logic
• Creation of notes, glossaries of terms and lists of acronyms and abbreviations

The result is a text that’s “fit for print”, in a standard English that’s easy to grasp for anyone with a relatively good level of English comprehension, whatever the particular idiosyncrasies of a speaker’s accent, talking style and use of idiom or slang.

(Of course, it goes without saying that the better your recording quality, the clearer the transcription!)

As more and more academic and business conferences are taking place online, all you need to do is get permission from your keynote speakers to be recorded, and we can transcribe their speech, translate it into English, edit and proofread it, then send it back to you mere days after your event – all in full compliance with data protection regulations. That way, you have a document of record that you can disseminate to a wider audience in whichever format you choose.

Because there are so many speakers of English as a second language – and that number is going up by the day – some of your clients might find the variety of people’s accents, dialects or idioms difficult to understand. A German’s “look over [the rim of] a plate” is an English speaker’s “thinking outside the box”, for instance.

English is also full of homonyms (words that sound the same but have different meanings – for example “It affects us too” and “It affects us two”, or “I love whales” versus “I love Wales”). Although the context of a speech will generally make the meaning obvious, we would still highly recommend having a native-English speaker for transcriptions – there is, after all, a world of difference between an “emergency break” and an “emergency brake” or between “He deplored the death penalty” and “He’d applaud the death penalty”.

Transcription

Our book editing service in Berlin edits manuscripts of novels, novellas, short stories, essays, feuilletons, memoirs, biographies, letters and non-fiction texts as well as academic, scientific and technical literature.

Our focus is on the careful handling of your manuscript, with respect for what you’ve written uppermost in our minds. Any interventions we might make in your text are intended to be helpful, constructive and always based on your wishes, and it goes without saying that you decide which suggestions you want to accept. Although we’ll always do our best to enhance your manuscript, you as the author will of course be the final arbiter.

With book proofreading we check your text for:

Orthography, grammar and punctuation as well as genre, introduction (WHO did WHAT, WHEN, WHERE and HOW, and especially WHY?). We also examine the structure, logic and comprehensibility of your work. We look at how the dramaturgy (the structure and progression of your plot, or its “red thread”) manifests itself. We also pay close attention to readability and whether the language and style are comprehensible and/or appropriate, as well as providing hints regarding story, dialogue and characterisation.

We’ll also keep an eye on all issues of style or wording, as well as acting as “first readers” to give you an idea of your work’s potential effect on other readers.

In terms of your target audience, we look at whether your work is informative, representative, entertaining, exciting and so on, as well as perhaps questioning aspects of your story. We try to remove redundancy or repetition, and recommend additions when it seems that certain details have been unintentionally left out.

Naturally, we’ll provide you with marginal comments that (we hope) may help you to address what we perceive as weak points, enabling you to produce text of the highest calibre.

request proofreading of a book