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- Abbreviation: Abbreviations consist of the first letter(s) of a word, but not the final letter. A full stop must be used (e.g. Prof. or Vic.).
- Abstract: An abstract is a brief summary of your journal article, research paper or thesis. It outlines your main content areas, research purpose, the outcomes of the study and the importance of your work. The aim of an abstract is to quickly convey the paper’s purpose to potential readers. The abstract must stand alone and be completely self-contained.
- Academic editing: A specialist field of editing concentrating on texts written by academic authors, such as journal articles, conference papers, manuscripts and theses.
- Academic editor: A specialist editor in the field of academic editing.
- Accredited editor: ‘Accredited editors have demonstrated their professional competence and understanding of editing standards, skills and knowledge by passing the IPEd accreditation exam’ (IPEd 2017).
- Acronym: An acronym is a string of initial letters that is pronounced as a word (e.g. NASA, NATO and TAFE).
- After-care services: A set of services offered to clients free of charge following the edit of their document. This might include updating your table of contents.
- Alt text: Text that details the content of an image that appears in an onscreen document. It can be considered the text equivalent to the image.
- American English: The style of English spelling, punctuation and expression used in the United States.
- APA: American Psychological Association.
- APA Style: The language, formatting and referencing style of the American Psychological Association. One of the most commonly used referencing styles in Australian universities.
- Australian Standards for Editing Practice: For the purposes of Capstone Editing’s editors and clients, the Australian Standards for Editing Practice are the core standards that professional editor are expected to meet.
- Book chapter: A chapter to be included in an edited book.
- Book manuscript: The unpublished version of a book.
- Book proposal: A document that argues the case for the importance of your idea, to encourage a publisher to contract you to develop your idea into a book.
- British/Australian English: The style of English spelling, punctuation and expression used in Australia. When writing formally, there are few differences between the style of English used in Australia and that used in the United Kingdom. When there are differences, these are spoken of as being part of British English or Australian English.
- Capitalisation: The use of capital or lower case letters.
- Clarity: Writing that is clear, coherent and intelligible.
- Conference paper: A paper for presentation at a conference, usually as a speech or poster presentation, with the purpose of sharing your work with your research community.
- Contraction: Contractions consist of at least the first and last letter of a word. Do not use a full stop (e.g. Dr, Jr or Qld).
- Copyediting: Editing to ensure accuracy, completeness and consistency.
- Diacritic: A symbol added to a letter that affects its pronunciation, such as the various accents in foreign words.
- Dinkus: A small drawing used to break up a block of text or decorate a page.
- Doctorate: The highest level of degree awarded by a university. Also known as a PhD.
- ESL: English as a Second Language.
- Flow: The quality of writing that allows it to sound natural, with a rhythm that is easy to read or listen to. Flow is created through varied sentence lengths, clear and concise wording, smooth transitions between sentences and logical connections between ideas.
- Font: The capital letters, lower case letters, numerals, symbols and punctuation marks that comprise the full set of characters of a typeface.
- Footnote flag: Usually a superscript number inserted in a text that points the reader to a corresponding footnote or endnote, containing supplementary details or source (reference) information.
- Formatting: All aspects of the visual presentation of a document.
- Formatting guidelines: Instructions and advice regarding the visual presentation of a document, usually provided by the institution or organisation overseeing the publication of the document (e.g. a university, journal or publisher).
- Grammar: ‘The features of a language (sounds, words, formation and arrangement of words, etc.) considered systematically as a whole, especially with reference to their mutual contrasts and relations’ (Macquarie Dictionary 2017).
- Grant: An amount of money paid to an academic or student for a particular study or academic purpose.
- Grant application: An application for consideration to receive a grant.
- ‘Guidelines for Editing Research Theses’: A set of guidelines outlining ‘the extent and nature of editorial services that professional editors can provide when editing research students’ theses and dissertations’ (IPEd 2017).
- Heavy editing for ESL authors: A service that extends on the Premium Copyediting service to include significant sentence rewording (if necessary) and advice on improving the structure and organisation of the document, as well as the support of statements.
- House style: Capstone Editing’s own formatting and language styles, designed to best suit the needs of academics and postgraduate students in Australia and New Zealand.
- Hyphenate: To join by a hyphen.
- Initialism: An initialism is a string of initial letters that is not pronounced as a word (e.g. ATO, CPI and WA).
- International publication standards: Of a high enough standard in relation to language (expression, grammar, syntax, style and tone), formatting and referencing to be published by international journals and publishers.
- International standard book number (ISBN): The number assigned to a book, as part of a worldwide system of cataloguing books.
- International standard serial number (ISSN): The number assigned to a journal or other serial publication, as part of a worldwide system of cataloguing journals and other series of publications.
- International student: A student who is not a citizen or permanent resident of Australia or New Zealand.
- In-text references: Bracketed source details inserted within the body of a text. Depending on the referencing style being used, an in-text reference may contain the family names of the authors of the source and the publication year, or the title of the source.
- Intransitive verb: A verb that never takes a direct object (e.g. come, arrive, sneeze), or a verb occurring without a direct object (e.g. eat in ‘He eats every 4 hours’).
- IPEd: The Institute of Professional Editors.
- Job application: A document that outlines a job applicant’s suitability and availability for a job.
- Journal article: An article written for publication in an academic journal. This may include original research papers, literature reviews, scientific papers, technical papers, position papers, review articles, case reports, research notes and letters. Many journals subject articles submitted to them to the peer-review process.
- Kerning: Adjusting the spacing between (characters) in a piece of text to be printed.
- Leading: The space between lines of type (pronounced ‘ledding’).
- Legibility: Relates to how clear letter shapes are when a text is reproduced.
- Letter from your editor: A letter written for you (the client) by your editor about your edited document.
- List of abbreviations: An alphabetical list of all the shortened forms used in the document. Part of the preliminary pages of a thesis or book.
- List of figures: A list of the figures inserted in a document. Part of the preliminary pages of a thesis or book.
- List of tables: A list of the tables inserted in a document. Part of the preliminary pages of a thesis or book.
- Logic: Clear reasoning or argumentation; sound sense.
- Macro: A computer program that can be used to automate procedures in applications such as word-processing software.
- Master’s thesis: An original work of scholarship, written with support from an academic supervisor. Usually 20,000 to 30,000 words.
- Non-breaking space: A space character that prevents a line break being automatically inserted at its position. Used when it is necessary to keep the text either side of the space together (such as in a number containing a space 10 000). To create a non-breaking space, type Ctrl + Shift + Spacebar.
- On-time Guarantee: Capstone Editing’s guarantee to our clients that we will return their work on or before the deadline that we have agreed with them.
- Parallel structure: ‘Consistent use of a grammatical form for equal clauses within a sentence or for items in a list’ (IPEd 2013).
- Participle: An adjective form derived from a verb (e.g. ‘walking’ in ‘walking track’).
- PDF: Portable document format.
- Peer review: The process by which journal articles are reviewed by a panel of experts (or ‘referees’) in the relevant field.
- PhD thesis or dissertation: An original work of scholarship, written with support from an academic supervisor. Usually 60,000 to 120,000 words.
- Pica: 1 pica is 12 points: 4.2 mm.
- Plain English: ‘Written or spoken English which attempts to eliminate jargon and technical terms, and to simplify structure, syntax, etc., in order to make a document or communication more accessible to the general public’ (Macquarie Dictionary 2017).
- Point: 1 point is 0.35 mm
- Postgraduate: ‘Someone studying at a university for a higher degree’ (Macquarie Dictionary 2017).
- Postgraduate coursework degree: A postgraduate course consisting of core, optional and elective units (similar to at the undergraduate level). May also have a research component requiring completion of a short thesis (akin to an Honours thesis).
- Postgraduate essay: An essay written as part of a postgraduate coursework degree.
- Postgraduate research degree: A postgraduate course consisting of the completion of a long, research-based thesis, written with support from an academic supervisor, with progress accessed through regular progress updates, meetings and presentations.
- Preliminary pages: The pages of a thesis or book before the introductory chapter. In a thesis, this includes the title page, abstract, declaration of originality, acknowledgements, table of contents, list of figures, list of tables and list of abbreviations.
- Promotion application: A document that outlines an academic’s suitability for promotion.
- Proofreading: Includes ‘making sure that all elements of the document are included and in the proper order, all amendments have been inserted, the house or other set style has been followed, and all spelling or punctuation errors have been deleted’ (IPEd 2017).
- Quality assurance: The practices built into the daily operations of a business to ensure the quality of the service being provided.
- Quality Guarantee: Capstone Editing’s guarantee to our clients that they will be satisfied with the quality of our work.
- Readability: Relating to the ease with which something can be read.
- Reference crosschecking: The process of matching in-text references or footnotes to the entries in the reference list or bibliography to identify any errors in source citation or missing referencing information.
- Referencing: A method of clearly indicating when ideas or words have been taken from other sources.
- Referencing guidelines: Instructions and examples regarding how to cite sources according to a particular referencing style (e.g. APA).
- Referral Program: A rewards program for clients who have used our service and who then recommend us to others.
- Report: A factual account, such as of the results of an academic investigation (i.e. a research report) or of the operations of a business (i.e. annual report).
- Research proposal: A clear summary of a proposed research project.
- Scholarship: A sum of money provided to a student or academic to support their studies or research.
- Solidus: Forward slash.
- Style: Decisions made about issues such as punctuation, capitalisation, spelling, formatting of lists and tables, presentation of numbers and abbreviations that are applied consistently throughout a document, usually using a style sheet, style guide or style manual.
- Style sheet: A record of all the style and spelling decisions made about a text.
- Submission guidelines: A set of requirements that a document must satisfy for it to be considered ready for submission. Usually provided by the institution or organisation to which the document is being submitted.
- Substantive editing: Editing to ‘ensure that the structure, content, language, style and presentation of the document are suitable for its intended purpose and readership’ (IPEd 2017).
- Syntax: ‘The patterns of formation of sentences and phrases from words in a particular language’ (Macquarie Dictionary 2017).
- Table of contents: A list of the chapter and section headings in a long document with their corresponding page numbers. Designed to make a longer document easily navigable.
- Textual device: A means of adding emphasis to writing (e.g. the arrangement of words, sentence structure, punctuation and formatting).
- Thesis by publication: A thesis in which the core chapters are wholly comprised of previously published work (e.g. an article published or accepted for publication in an academic journal, or a book chapter published elsewhere.)
- Thesis examiner: An expert in a relevant field charged with judging the academic merit of a thesis and its readiness for publication.
- Track Changes: A MS Office tool that allows tracking of changes made to a document.
- Typeface: In printing, the style or appearance of type.
- Undergraduate: ‘A student in a university or college who has not completed a first degree’ (Macquarie Dictionary 2017).
- Unintentional plagiarism: Inadequate rewording of, and/or failure to reference, the source of an idea resulting in the unintentional presentation of others’ work as your own.
- Word reduction: Editing to reduce the number of words of a document, by making the expression more concise, summarising and identifying unnecessary detail. Usually done to meet a word limit, such as for the abstract of a journal article.
