Speaker 1: I don't know if there is anything as dull and tedious as editing an academic manuscript, especially if it's your own. When editing our own work, the brain tends to anticipate what the eye will see. So the eye doesn't see what's on the page. The eye sees what the brain tells it it will see. The point of all this is, rather than doing a good solid scrub of the document, the eye is just sort of scanning it. As a result, we think we've got a pretty good document, when in fact, it's garbage. I'm Dr. Lon Schiffbauer, and this is how to edit an academic manuscript. Editing and proofing an academic manuscript means looking for more than just spelling and grammar and format. A good solid editorial process should consider these seven elements. Structure and Format. The paper includes all the required sections and is formatted correctly. Narrative Flow. The content should follow a clear, logical narrative flow throughout the manuscript, including smooth transitions from one topic to another. Topic Discipline. The content should always adhere to your stated research problem, never straying off topic. Coherence. The content clearly conveys your line of reasoning. Academic Rigor. The content properly cites research and substantiates your claims and interpretations. Grammar and Spelling. The content maintains correct use of active versus passive voice, past, present, and future tense, verb agreement, third person, and spelling. Writing Style. The content employs appropriate sentence length, economy of language, using one word when one will do, and not three. And Academic Tone, also known as scholarly voice. Now these are the seven elements you should consider when performing an edit. But how exactly do we then edit the manuscript? Well here are 10 things you can do to really make sure that your proofreading is top notch. Number 1. Carve out short periods of time in which you can edit your manuscript. The brain can maintain focus for only so long before it starts to get sloppy and miss things. Keep your mental focus sharp by editing in one hour blocks throughout the day. Number 2. Work from a printout, not a computer screen. The physical nature of paper makes it easier for the brain to engage with and form a mental map of the content. Another advantage of a physical printout is you can take it anywhere. So whether you're waiting in line, doctor's office, who knows what, you can always pull it out and maybe get in good 10 minutes of editing. Number 3, and this is my favorite, read your manuscript aloud. When you read your own content, the eye tends to see what it expects to see, what we intended to write, not what is actually on the page. When we read the material out loud, it forces us to slow down and really make sure we're catching each and every single word. Furthermore, the ear can hear poor grammar better than the eye can see it. When you say it out loud and it sounds funky, that's because it's funky. Number 4. Use a blank sheet of paper to cover the lines below the one you're reading. This keeps your eye from slipping into scan mode and forces you to slow down and focus on the content. It also helps you read each sentence individually and assess it as a standalone thought. Now if you're breaking rule number 2 and actually editing on a computer screen, go ahead and highlight each sentence individually. That way you can focus on the sentence that you have highlighted before you. Number 5. Highlight circle or otherwise check off every punctuation mark. This forces you to pay close attention to each mark and challenge its use. This is especially helpful when proofreading your references. Number 6. In addition to reading your manuscript from beginning to end, edit it from end to beginning. Now here's the idea. When you first sit down to start editing your manuscript, you're fresh, you're laser focused, you're all there. But as you go through, your attention starts to wane. This means that in the case of editing a paper, the beginning of the paper is fantastic, the middle is eh, and the last part of the paper, it's garbage. So we want to make sure that we are applying the same amount of mental faculties to the end as we are the beginning. Now another thing this does is it helps to break up the narrative flow. Now yes, we want to make sure the narrative flow is good, but we can get caught up in the story, if you will, and we start to read our paper as a paper rather than looking at sentence structure, grammar, spelling, things like that. By reading from the end and going to the beginning, that narrative flow is broken, and so it forces us to pay attention to those small little persnickety things. Number 7. Use your computer's search function to find common mistakes that keep cropping up. This is a great way to quickly find and fix instances of that, who, a fact, a fact, it's, it's, and other common grammatical errors that may vex you. Number 8. Compartmentalize your edits to really focus on those seven elements that we talked about earlier. So for example, one edit is just about spelling and grammar, nothing else. The next edit, just about narrative flow and coherence. You really want to make sure that you're focusing on one thing so that you can apply all your mental faculties to it. Number 9. Read the paper as a reader, not as a writer. Now I know that's not easy, in fact it's probably impossible, but bear with me. As the writer, you are already invested in the outcome. You already think the flow is fine because, after all, you wrote it. You already believe that you have answered all the questions that you raised at the beginning because otherwise you wouldn't have submitted it. But a reader doesn't know any of that. A reader doesn't know what you're writing about unless you tell them what you're writing about. The reader doesn't know what arguments you're going to make unless you tell them what arguments you're going to make. The reader does not buy into your results unless you've really substantiated those results. And the reader does not really follow your narrative unless you have a good, clean, cohesive narrative. So by recalibrating our brains and looking at this paper as though we had never seen it before, we're really challenging ourselves to do it right. Number 10. It's appropriate that it's number 10 because number 10, you want to edit your manuscript 10 times. Now I know this sounds excessive, but trust me, it's not. A good, solid manuscript goes through multiple iterations, outline, rough draft, first draft, second draft, final, final, final, final, final, final. And remember, you're going to compartmentalize your edits to look for specific elements. And so this is going to take multiple edits. And here's the thing, even after 10 edits, your manuscript still won't be perfect. I edited the crap out of my PhD dissertation, and I have since still found several errors. I'm not going to show you where they are, but trust me, they're there. So while your manuscript won't be perfect, you'll know it's as good as it can be before that law of depreciating return starts to kick in. So there you go. Follow those 10 steps to account for those 7 elements, and you're going to have a solid manuscript. All right? I hope this was helpful. We'll talk to you again soon. Until then, have a fantastic day.