Professional editing service

[homeschoolmom1]

Is it legal and ethical to use a professional editing service for the Capstone at TESU? For editing and proofreading. Not for actually writing it, of course. How about having a friendor family member look it over before submission?

[davewill]

Having someone proofread is good, even prudent, but there should be no editing. The words should be 100% your own.

[cookderosa]

Is it legal and ethical to use a professional editing service for the Capstone at TESU? For editing and proofreading. Not for actually writing it, of course. How about having a friendor family member look it over before submission?

You may have a hard time finding a legitimate editor. A LOT of writing services are under the disguise of editing/proofing when in reality they are writers selling their content. Years ago when I investigated hiring an editor for my book I spent a lot of time looking and ultimately settled on volunteers. There are some gig sites that will charge you per page - but let me offer this, have you downloaded the free version of Grammarly? It is AWESOME and works with most word processing programs. When you type, it is running a full grammar check as you go (not just spell check) so if I forget a comma (or more likely, add too many of them in lol) it is auto-checking constantly. If I mix up their, they're and there, it's indicating it right now. They have a premium version that I don't use ($) but it goes a lot deeper and can rewrite sentences and help with word choice too. I think it's about $50, might be cheaper to use Grammarly premium for a month than hire an editor. (and less murky ethically)

[ilovecredits]

Grammarly is great, it gives you friendly reminders when you mess up and even gives you suggestions to replace some words that are often overused.
Free version is great and premium is worth it if you can find it for cheap

[clep3705]

Having someone proofread is good, even prudent, but there should be no editing. The words should be 100% your own.

I basically agree. But if I could hire an APA 6th edition savant to edit my citations and references so I don't lose points, I wouldn't have any ethical qualms about paying for that. Some professors are way too pedantic on APA formatting.

[keepsingin]

TESU gives its students free credit toward SmartThinking tutoring services and they have a writing submission section where the tutors only give you their thoughts and opinions on what they think of your paper, they don't edit anything. You can select the genre of writing and so forth; it's super helpful, I'd recommend you give it a try. Include a note specifically asking about the format, but I suggest to always RESEARCH anything anyone says about current APA/MLA format just to be extra sure.

The tutors on other subjects are also great at explaining difficult concepts.

Tutorial Services Thomas Edison State University offers students access to the SMARTHINKING online tutorial service free of charge. It is particularly helpful if you are taking mathematics, physics, Spanish, writing, statistics, accounting, economics (macro and micro) or chemistry. If you are taking other subjects but need help with writing, you may also access the service to get the help you need.

Students taking online courses will find a link to the service in each course you are taking. This link will describe the steps you need to take to set up a personal account. You only need to set up an account once, even if you use it for more than one course.

All students receive information on accessing SMARTHINKING with your registration confirmation. Once you have the login information, go to www.smarthinking.com and follow the instructions to set up a personal account.

Taken from:
https://www.tesu.edu/academics/catalog/G...ourses.cfm
https://blog.tesu.edu/7-essential-studen...work-pains

[homeschoolmom1]

Thanks everyone, all of your thoughts and suggestions are super helpful.

[Life Long Learning]

Free version of Grammarly is 100 times better than the MS Word version.  I use the pro-version to turn in papers for the plagiarism score.

[homeschoolmom1]

So I went to see if there is a software solution for APA formatting, and there is: Perrla. Never heard of it, but I will look into it. $7 per month.

---

LLL, what do you mean by "the MS Word version"? And by using the pro version for the plagiarism score? I am confused.

[High_Order1]

Neat question!

I think true editing is ethically wrong. I think if you have to have editing help to graduate... do what you have to do to survive, but understand that the capstone showcases your ability, not compose.ly's.

Having someone review your stuff and suggest areas that you need to go back and look at is probably ok.

My experience with TESU's capstone (Novemeber 17 cohort) is that you do the sections and turn them in; the mentor tells you what you need to tighten up on.

Far as software, I bought referencepoints APA 6th ed template. Had I had time and a demo project to get conversant with it, it probably would have been a big help; all it did was complicate things. My paper was like 71 pages, for reference.

I used the citation machine online to format most stuff, and a copy of the latest APA (with errata) I found online to crosscheck.

My mentor did not follow the TESU Capstone book exactly. If you get the lady that wrote it, it may be different. I hammered my mentor with questions... earn that money! But I wasn't going to lose points because the book lady said this, this, this, and the page with the assignment said THIS, you know?

I didn't use grammarly, but typically that's not my problem. Math is... lol