Editing for non-native
English speaking scientists
Learning by Trial and Error
LEONIE ZANDRA PIPE
The Art
of
Editing
Overview
The challenges of being an ESL editor in a small, isolated country
The major errors I made as a beginning editor and how I learned
from them
The diversity of terms that authors expect you to know in their
specialist fields, even though you can’t be an expert in everything
The challenges faced by ESL scientists trying to publish in
competitive academic journals
Turning editing into an art – innate language ability + experience
Being an ESL editor in a small
isolated country
4 major mistakes I (and likely many
others) made when embarking on the
editing process
Making the writing so perfect and formal that the writer’s
original voice was lost, even though the meaning was
preserved.
Trying too hard (can lead to disaster!)
Not appreciating the specialist terminologies.
Changing words – or even their order.
Error 1: Sterilising the life out of
a manuscript
A few examples:
 Replacing “carry out” with “conducted” or “performed”
 Replacing “have” with “possessed”
 Replacing “There are many examples of X in the literature” with “Many
examples of X can be found in the literature”
If you apply the above to each of your edited manuscripts, your edits will
end up looking all the same – as if they have been passed through a filter
Error 2: Trying too hard
Original construct was
better
Apparently, “cause” was
supposed to be the correct
term here
The V-packed rod was arcdischarge evaporated,
resulting in the deposition
Error 3: Not appreciating specialist
terminologies
 Such as the @ symbol, which designates layer-substrate configurations in
composite nanomaterials
 Terms such as heteroscedasticity (also spelled heteroskadisticity)
 Knowing when to capitalise the first letter (late Jurassic or Late Jurassic?)
When Google is your best friend
Many specialist terminologies appear to be incorrect word usages, or words
used in the incorrect context. Some examples…
 Non-stationary - wouldn’t you love to edit this to “dynamic”?
 NP-hard – a term in computational complexity that is rather “hard” to explain
 Vicarious calibration (I nearly edited this to “remote calibration”)
 Coupon
 Phantom
Non-stationary process – A process in which the statistical properties
remain unchanged over time and exhibit no trends. A close relative of
“dynamic” but not the same thing!
Example of an NP-hard problem – the Travelling Salesman Problem
Vicarious Calibration
What it does not mean: Calibrating through another’s thoughts and actions
What it does mean: Independent checking of the quality of remotely sensed data, typically
from the Earth’s surface.
Again, the casual and technical uses of the word “vicarious” are related but not the same
True colour high spatial resolution image of York University, Toronto, Ontario, Canada.
Coupon
In chemical engineering, not a strip of paper offering a discount or a free
promotional gift!
It’s a polished strip of specified size and weight that detects the corrosive
action of a gas or liquid
Phantom
In dosimetry, not a ghost or a spectre!
It’s a proxy of human tissues used to estimate the dose administered to
patients receiving CT scans.
Error 4: Changing words – or their
order
First sentence: Should not have altered “investigated”.
Second sentence: Should not have altered “with 0.21 nm fringe spacing”.
A couple of other examples…
Original :
A fossil polychaete annelid, Guanshanchaeta felicia gen. et sp. nov.,from the Lower
Cambrian Guanshan Biota (Cambrian Series 2, stage 4) is described.
Incorrectly edited to;
We newly report a fossilized polychaete annelid, Guanshanchaeta felicia from the Lower
Cambrian Guanshan Biota
Original: The J-aggregates based on the water soluble porphyrin (H4TPPSn) is one of the
most researched J aggregates because of the very unique properties as described above in
spite of the simple structure.
Incorrectly edited to: J-aggregates are commonly studied in water soluble porphyrin
(H4TPPSn), which exhibits the abovementioned unique properties despite its simple
structure.
Coping with negative feedback
 Consider your negative feedback as an important part
of the learning curve. You will remember those errors
and not repeat them
 Not working directly with authors increases the chance
of negative feedback because misunderstandings
cannot be sorted on a one-to-one basis
 Remember that not everyone will like your style. Some
will love it; others will be irked by it or find it wanting
 Remember that you are a human, not a robot
Challenges faced by ESL scientists
trying to publish in academic journals
Expectations and standards of academic journals vs. elegant writing style.
ESL authors refer to already published articles and try to emulate their style.
BUT… Good scientists are not necessarily good writers.
Consider the following portion of an Abstract written by native-English scientists.
We extend the multiple hypothesis framework to allow for both association uncertainty and a switched
dynamic model depending on the currently moving leg. Furthermore, an occlusion model and nonstationary dynamic state transition probabilities are used in the evaluation of hypotheses to further
improve tracking robustness. Experimental results demonstrate the robustness and efficiency of the
proposed framework.
The yellow sentence could be edited to “To further improve tracking robustness, we evaluated
hypotheses using an occlusion model and non-stationary dynamic state transition probabilities”.
The competent editor
A competent editor of ESL academic papers will
 Have a good grasp of grammar, syntax and sentence structure
 Be able to transform the paper into a readable document while preserving
the author’s intended meaning
 Be able to format the document according to the relevant style guide (if
requested)
 Will give the edited paper a once-over to check for introduced errors,
typos and clumsy changes
The “art” of editing
An editor who has mastered the “art” of editing will
 Give the author’s voice space to breathe, within the constraints of
academic journal expectations
 Look for repeated use of a word or phrase that looks incorrect, and
recognise that it probably represents a specialised terminology
 Seek economy and elegance, not just formal language, throughout the
editing process
 Likely have been a competent editor before mastering the art of
editing
Questions are as welcome as sister
cities 
Auckland, New Zealand
Toronto, Canada