Welcome to Acalanser, the home of academic language editing

1. Language Editing

• We’ll correct your text for spelling, punctuation, grammar, and syntax, and we’ll ensure it meets the standards set by the style guide of your choice: ACS, APA, AMA, MLA, or CMOS.
• If you tell us where you’re submitting, we can ensure your text meets the specific demands of your target journal, and we can shorten an overlong text to meet your word limit.
• We’ll improve the form of sentences and the flow of paragraphs and sections to optimize your texts’ clarity and your readers’ experience. We’ll check the precision and accuracy of your vocabulary, and we’ll resolve any unclear or ambiguous expressions.
• We’ll answer all and any queries you bring about our editing until you’re satisfied that your text is as good as it can be.

2. Developmental Language Editing

Most doctoral students need to submit clear and correct manuscripts to journals and conferences if they’re to succeed in publishing their work. But they also want to learn how to write better texts more efficiently. This editing service helps them do both.

How does developmental language editing work?

• Early in the writing process, the author sends us part of their text, typically about 500 words from a central section of the text.
• We correct and improve the extract through language editing. Then, we explain to the author exactly what we’ve done and why, and we answer any open questions about the editing; this can be face to face, by phone, or most effectively by Zoom. Alternatively, we can summarize in a screen capture video what the author most needs to pay attention to when drafting the rest of the paper.
• Next, the first two steps are repeated with the abstract or with part (about 500 words again) of the introduction, discussion, or conclusion.
• When the author has completed the text and incorporated their supervisor’s comments, we edit it thoroughly for language, we answer any open questions about the editing as before, and we return the edited version with a personalized checklist of points the author should keep in mind when drafting future texts.

3. Writing Coaching and Consultation

Most authors struggle with some aspect of writing. Whether it’s about profiling your target journals, organizing related work and literature reviews, writing efficiently, or simply getting started, a short conversation with an expert over Zoom can help you understand what you need to do and give you the confidence to complete your work effectively. You can pick the time and number of conversations, and their topics are entirely your choice: we’re here to help you and your writing wherever you may be. Here’s how it works:

• You send us a sample of your writing, if you have one, or a description of your writing problem, and we fix a time to speak and set up a Zoom call.
• When you speak with us, we’ve reviewed what you sent and are prepared to listen and advise about whatever aspect of your writing you choose.
• If you wish, we can record the entire conversation and send you a link so that you can download and keep the recording. We’ll also recommend techniques and resources to help your future writing.

4. Tailored Writing Courses

Today’s technology allows us to provide tailor-made writing courses to small groups of specialists anywhere in the world, and our experience and academic qualifications enable us to design and deliver such courses to a wide range of disciplines.

• Courses can be designed for all language levels from B2.1 (Council of Europe scale: https://www.coe.int/en/web/common-european-framework-reference-languages/the-cefr-descriptors) upward.
• Courses can be tailored to the requirements of any field; most of our experience is with empirical disciplines, but we’ve also worked with doctoral students from mathematics and philosophy.
• Our first step is a rigorous needs analysis. We speak to subject teachers and supervisors and examine texts from target journals and conferences before presenting a detailed course overview for approval. Where the course is to be integrated into a broader program, we provide all any documentation required to support this, including details indicating how many ECTS or other credits completing course participants should gain.
• Course workshops can be scheduled at any timing and frequency to suit the group, though we usually recommend leaving one to two weeks between workshops so that participants can complete writing assignments.
• The workshops incorporate input, pairwork, groupwork, and plenary discussions of aspects of model texts from target journals and/or conferences. If the participants are at bachelor or master level, we ask your faculty to provide samples of successful semester papers or theses as appropriate.
• Participants all write assignments and receive detailed individual commentary on this. They’re asked to produce second drafts of these, which can be used as a basis of assessment for credits.
• Because all participants’ assignments receive detailed individual commentary, we usually ask that each course has a maximum of 16 participants.
• At the end of each course, the participants each receive an overview of their achievement over the course and the faculty receive a short final report on the course.