Why use a proofreading service?

Using a professional proofreading service is vital, whether you are writing an academic assignment, a paper to be submitted for publication or a business document.

The ideas and arguments contained within your document may be compelling, but unless you communicate these with absolute clarity then they will not have the impact that you desire.

Many people struggle with English, and that can sometimes make it difficult to express your ideas effectively. However, even if your English is excellent, proofreading a document yourself has limited effectiveness.

This is for two main reasons;

1. If you have carefully checked and re-checked your document several times then you are in danger of reading what you think you wrote rather than what you actually wrote. There is a version of the document in your head, and when you proof-read your own work you know the correct spelling and grammar you should be using, as well as the meaning you want to convey. Often you might miss your own typographical errors simply because the version on the page is competing against a much more vivid version of the document that’s in your mind

2. By the time you have finished writing your document you are likely to know more about your subject that almost anyone else. You are now an expert on the subject matter that you are presenting, and because of that arguments that seem simple and obvious to you may have significant gaps in reasoning that a non-expert will have difficulty following. It might seem surprising, but a ‘non-expert’ could well include those responsible for assessing your work.

Wired magazine called this a ‘familiarisation handicap’ – in other words you are simply too close to the document to realise its flaws. It doesn’t matter how much care you put into your document, it is almost impossible to pick up on many of the issues that someone reading the work for the first time will spot instantly. The danger arises when the first person, other than yourself or a professional proofreading service, to read the work is the person who will be deciding on your final mark.

This is why using a proofreading service should become part of your submission process.

By allowing a professional, highly qualified expert to review your work and make corrections, you are ensuring that you are delivering a piece of work that is not only free from spelling and grammatical errors, but also presents your argument in the clearest possible terms that can be unambiguously understood by another reader.

By the time you have engaged a proofreading service you will have spent many hours researching and writing about your subject, and if you are submitting a final-year dissertation or PhD thesis, then the outcome of your assessment could affect the rest of your life, including your future job prospects and your income. After all the effort you have gone through to get your work to this point you owe it to yourself to do everything you can to show it in its most positive light.

Here at Oxbridge Proofreading® all of our editors are not only experts in their chosen field, but are also expert English communicators. They all have experience both writing and marking academic work and know precisely what someone assessing your work is looking out for.