Essay Proofreading Service UK

Comprehensive Essay Proofreading Service

The Substantive Essay Proofreading Service is the Ultimate Proofreader's most comprehensive and detailed proofreading service for academic and scholarly essays.

In this service, your academic article or essay will undergo a holistic English language review that will look into every aspect of it, including your grammar use, punctuation, spelling, choice of words, academic vocabulary, structure of sentences, length of paragraphs and referencing style.

In this thorough proofreading service, our expert editors and proofreaders – with their decades of experience – will also check your text in depth for coherence and clarity of ideas and argument. They will flag up any issues of inconsistency or contradiction they will find in your paper and give you relevant annotations.
This essay proofreading and editing service is designed to essentially help ESL students undertaking a Master's or PhD degree to improve their academic writing and style by correcting a multitude of language issues. It is also extremely popular among native English-speaking academics and university students.

This service is guaranteed to make a significant improvement in your essay. 

We pride ourselves on the fact that our professional team of native English copy-editors and proofreaders have intensively edited and proofread over 20,000 essays for MA and PhD students, academics and researchers studying in universities in the UK and around the world.

See related: In-depth Thesis Proofreading & Editing Service

How we proofread your essay in depth

Proofreading or copy-editing your essay substantively or in depth means examining your academic manuscript on multiple levels to ensure it is an error-free and well-written academic document.

We will thoroughly proof and check your essay, word by word and line by line, to find and fix:

• Grammatical/spelling/punctuation errors;
• Lexical errors;
• Syntactic errors;
• Semantic errors;
• Typographical errors (extra letters, incorrect spacing between words, additional full stops).
• Consistency issues: the use of fonts, line spacing, italics, bold type, and headings/sub-headings (such as numbering, underlining).
• Coherence, intelligibility, readability issues

a) Grammar, punctuation, and spelling

1.Grammar

a) Subject-verb agreement (SVA)

A massive number of  corrections we introduce in essays are related subject-verb agreement. A significant number of academics often make this mistake especially when they write a long sentence where the verb doer becomes obscured.

Let's look at this example:

Original: The three main pillars of social science theory, which is employed by the researcher, serves the purpose of the study perfectly.

Edited: The three main pillars of social science theory, which is employed by the researcher, serve the purpose of the study perfectly.

Here is another example:

Original: Figure 3, which highlights the three shapes, mainly focus on the processes and duration of each activity.

Edited: Figure 3, which highlights the three shapes, mainly focuses on the processes and duration of each activity.  

b) Use of conjunctions/connectors 

Connectors or conjunctions in English are extremely useful, given that they help you transit smoothly from one theme or sub-theme to another. Conjunctions also help the flow of language, from one paragraph to another.

Let's look at an example:

Original: The generalisability of the conclusions is affected by the sample size, however, the conclusions can still enrich knowledge and serve future research.

Edited (1): The generalisability of the conclusions is affected by the sample size; however, the conclusions can still enrich knowledge and serve future research.

Edited (2): The generalisability of the conclusions is affected by the sample size. However, the conclusions can still enrich knowledge and serve future research. 

c) The use of tenses

MA and PhD students are expected to use different tenses when writing their essay, depending on the section of the paper. The tense used in the introduction part, for instance, is not the same as the tense used in the main body or conclusion section of the essay. Failure to use the correct tense in your essay makes your text hard to digest and understand – and above all can lead to a lower grade.

Original: In this academic essay, I aimed to present the phenomenon which I mentioned in detail in the following section.

Edited: In this academic essay, I aim to present the phenomenon which I will present in detail in the following section.

Original: I have reviewed the literature for my thesis two weeks ago.

Edited: I reviewed the literature for my thesis two weeks ago.

Original: I will collect my data through semi-structured interviews. Three interviews were conducted with senior managers of the companies included in the study.

Edited: I collected my data through semi-structured interviews. Three interviews were conducted with senior managers of the companies included in the study. 

d) The use of modifiers

Original: The proofreader said the chapter was well written, but it's content needed further detail.

Edited: The proofreader said the chapter was well written, but its content needed further detail.

e) The use of apostrophe, lower and upper case.

Original: The tutors' complaint was that the student was not following a qualitative research method.

Edited: The tutor's complaint was that the student was not following a qualitative research method.

Original: The phenomenon was discussed at the level of the Whole World.

Edited: The phenomenon was discussed at the level of the whole world. 

2. Spelling

In English, there are many tricky, confusing and commonly misspelt words, including adjectives, verbs and names. We pick them up and correct them if they occur in your paper. 

a) Words

Stationery (stationary), grammer (grammar), loose (lose - as a verb), believes (beliefs - as a noun), proof read (proofread), weak (week), affect (effect) etc.

Hum (Hume), Aristole (Aristotle), Daved (David) etc 

b) Typographical errors

• They wanted too (to) discuss this in their academic paper.
•  In the peeface (preface), they explained what they will discuss in their thesis.
• Proofreading services are impotent (important).
  

c) American/British English

We will replace any American words or expressions with British equivalents or vice versa, depending on your required British variant, as exemplified below:

•  Learned (American) Learnt (British)
• Focussed (American) Focused (British)
•  Center (American) Centre (British)
•  Elective (North American) Optional course of study (British)
• Characterize (American) Characterise (British)
  

3. Punctuation 

Punctuation is one of the most divisive elements of language and is one of the trickiest to get right in your dissertation/thesis. Some punctuation-related errors are too simple and result from oversight, but others simply result from the writer's inability to punctuate correctly.

a) The full stop

Original: Jones and Smith (1994) argue that a model of risks and hazards could potentially have an impact on human safety, this is because harm is the result of human error, in their view.

Edited: Jones and Smith (1994) argue that a model of risks and hazards could potentially have an impact on human safety. This is because harm is the result of human error, in their view. 

b) The colon (common error)

Original: Numerous researchers argue that cognitive biases emerge at three levels, social, economic, and cultural.

Edited: Numerous researchers argue that cognitive biases emerge at three levels: social, economic, and cultural. 

c) The semicolon

Original: Several of the participants reported feeling anxious during the experiment, however, they were reassured during the post-experiment briefing that this was a perfectly normal reaction.

Edited: Several of the participants reported feeling anxious during the experiment; however, they were reassured during the post-experiment briefing that this was a perfectly normal reaction. 

d) Using quotations

Original: However, although this might seem obvious, Xavier (2016, p.2) states that there exists a lack of effective curricula and learning/teaching materials on comprehensive sex education and adolescents get most of the information from their peers. Most of the time it will be vague and unclear information.

Edited: However, although this might seem obvious, Xavier (2016, p.2) states that, “there exists a lack of effective curricula and learning/teaching materials on comprehensive sex education and adolescents get most of the information from their peers. Most of the time it will be vague and unclear information.” 

b) Sentence structure, word choice, clarity, and flow

As part of this specialist essay editing and proofreading service, our editors will improve the clarity, flow, and readability of your work.

This includes:

• Refining your written English so that it is appropriate to your academic discipline, by employing richer academic language and vocabulary and removing slang/colloquial expressions;
• Using alternative, more dynamic words in place of bland, commonplace, or overused words (e.g., “exhibits”, “illustrates”, “demonstrates”, rather than “shows”);
• Reordering some sentences/paragraphs so that they tell a more logical story;
• Adding sentences/phrases that link sections or paragraphs together. This further enhances the logical flow of your essay;

• Removing any superfluous, redundant, or unnecessary words or phrases;
• 
  
• Leaving editorial comments and questions regarding lack of clarity, contradiction or inconsistency;
  
• Ensuring the referencing style has been adhered to correctly and consistently throughout.

c) Length/Reduction

Essays are often required to be a certain number of words: mostly, around 3000, words. Sticking to the expected word count in your essay can sometimes be very difficult to achieve. Our team of dedicated essay copy-editors and proofreaders will therefore help reduce your work so that it falls within the required limits. Often this is achieved by removing redundant or repeated information/words and tightening the use of grammar.

Occasionally, this could involve combining and condensing key ideas and information, and replacing lengthy phrases with just one or two key words that convey the same meaning.

Looking for a professional dissertation editing service? We also provide unique PhD and Master's thesis proofreading services to students and academics around the world.

Mechanical and formatting errors in your essay?

• Double spaces between characters, especially after a full stop wrong or missing headings or titles in a table, or captions misaligned columns or rows in a table
  
• Misaligned margins
  
• Misaligned headings
• Incorrect text references
  
• Inconsistent bullet formatting
  
• Incorrect fonts/font sizes
  
• Incorrect capitalisation
  
• Footnotes or endnotes 
  
• Interchanging small words such as: of/off/on, and/an/as, or it/is/if incorrect use of trademarks
  
• Missing numbers in a numbered sequence/list incorrect dates
  
• Inconsistent use of abbreviations
• Contractions: i.e didn't/did not
• Extra spaces
  

Testimonials 

I am dealing with different master thesis proofreading services and companies. I found "the ultimate proofreader" to be the best in terms of coordinating the operations, prices, fast delivery, and the quality of editors," AJ, a doctoral student in Bristol.

I have used their services view times, they were very professional. the prices are reasonable and they deliver within or even before the time I request. they are one of best proofreading I used" Nada, a PhD student.

The Ultimate Proofreader is an excellent professional proofreading service provider. I have tried many before it but to be honest I have not seen such accuracy, precision and in-depth proofreading and editing of my papers before. Definitely, I would recommend it to anyone who wants to get their paper corrected and improved to a high standard," Ching, a Master's degree student.

An excellent professional service at a very reasonable cost. I would recommend the service to anyone looking for a good editing or proofreading service. The paraphrasing service UK you provide is also outstanding," Ayman, a doctoral student.