Edit Your Copy

Original Post - 17 Dec 2023 - Michael H. Scott

Visit Structural Analysis Is Simple on Substack.

There’s more to publishing a journal article–or any other content you want to unleash on the world–than writing some words, accepting all spell check corrections, and running your favorite AI-powered grammar checker.

From conception to preservation on a virtual shelf, your journal article should go through at least five stages of editing–most stages more than once. The following summaries draw heavily from this article.

Developmental Editing

Developmental editing is the big picture phase where the idea for the article is generated. Your advisor says “Let’s write a paper about all the fragility functions you’ve developed”. You say “OK”. Maybe there’s some back and forth about whether to include the Concrete24 results, or to save those for the next article and stick with Concrete23.

At this stage, also discuss with your advisor the manuscript title and the target (and backup) journal.

After receiving your marching orders, you should produce a vomit draft. If you are more of a pantser than a plotter, you may not outline before you vomit. But, outline or not, put words and ideas down on paper without much concern for spelling, grammar, or flow.

Under no circumstances should you show your vomit draft to your advisor. You will waste their time and you will look bad. Go through some structural editing and basic checks before you show anything to anyone.

Structural Editing

With vomit draft in hand, you can start to assess the high level flow of the manuscript. Does the manuscript follow IMRAD format? Do the background and examples support the research objectives? Take any Chekhov guns off the wall too.

Once you have the sections of the manuscript in order, you should start moving paragraphs around within the sections. An incredibly useful tool is the reverse outline where you highlight the main point of each paragraph. If a paragraph has more than one main point, break the paragraph up into multiple paragraphs. When you read only the highlighted main points in each paragraph, the manuscript should make sense and have a flow.

After a structural edit or two, you will have a presentable rough draft, something you can show your advisor and request feedback. You and your advisor may go through multiple rounds of structural editing.

Copy Editing

Sharing knowledge is great, but the ultimate goal of publishing a journal article is to sell yourself.

You are producing copy, i.e., you are copywriting. You are advertising.

Copy editing deals with how the message is delivered. You have to be clear about what you are selling and how it will benefit others. You have to know your audience.

Does your writing make sense? Are there wordy passages? Do you rely on pronouns that were defined three sentences ago? Are transitions smooth? Do you over-use the passive voice? Are there any statements that could be misinterpreted? Do you repeat the same sentence structure over and over? Does every sentence support your message? Are you overstating the results? Although you are advertising, don’t over sell anything.

Do not make the reader work to figure out your message. If the reader has to fill in gaps or connect the dots in your head, they will move on to the next article–and in the case of a peer reviewer, they will recommend rejecting your manuscript.

Copy editing is the most overlooked phase of editing a journal manuscript. The authors of every mediocre article you’ve read did everything but copy edit.

Copy editing can make a mediocre manuscript good. Copy editing can also make a good manuscript great.

Line Editing

Line editing and copy editing are closely related. I interpret copy editing as dealing with the message while line editing deals with the mechanics. This delineation may be non-standard, but copy and line editing are zero sum–you have to do both.

Line editing is reading through your manuscript line by line, looking for spelling and grammar errors, tightening up the punctuation, using better adjectives, removing useless words like “~~A total of e~~Eight models…”, etc.

AI tools can handle most line editing tasks, but these tools won’t flag everything like grammatically correct juxtapositions of “the” and “then”.

One trick to line editing is to read your manuscript in reverse order, i.e., read the final sentence, then read the next to last sentence, and so on until you hit the first sentence of the Introduction. Going in reverse order makes it more difficult for your brain to fill in gaps and overlook errors.

It is not uncommon for your manuscript to become 10% shorter after heavy copy and line editing. If copy and line editing make your manuscript longer, you should go back to structural editing.

Also, don’t expect peer reviewers to be copy or line editors. Although some peer reviewers will suggest mechanical corrections, their focus will be the structure and the message of your manuscript.

Proofreading

When your manuscript is accepted for publication, the journal production team will create proofs, i.e., how the article will appear in print. The production staff of some journals will take your writing as is, while the staff at other journals will tweak your wording to conform to style guidelines.

In most cases, the minor tweaks are harmless and you shouldn’t blow a gasket. But sometimes, the minor tweaks can completely change your message.

It is your job to read through the proofs and check for alterations or errors. Proofreading is basically line editing after some stranger has disturbed your system.

If your manuscript is heavy on equations, pay attention to the equations in the proof. Conversions from LaTeX to Equation Editor are far from perfect.

The window for proofreading is typically very short, maybe 48 hours. Don’t blow this step off.

If peer reviewers consistently knock the grammar or clarity of your writing, seek outside services for copy and line editing. The idea that “the research should stand above the writing quality” is hogwash and a cop-out.

OpenSees Cloud

OpenSees AMI