The technical editing services will check your submitted document for correct grammar, capitalization, punctuation, spelling, and clarity. We will also review tone, organization, and in-text citations. However, the editor will not rewrite your paper for you, check the table of contents for accuracy, edit references/bibliographies, fact check, or format check (format checking is required for theses and dissertations, but  is completed by a Graduate Education Specialist, not the technical editor.) For more information on format checking, visit the Thesis and Dissertation Information webpage.

We accept conference papers, journal articles, theses and dissertations, and thesis or dissertation proposals. 

Yes. You may use the editor’s comments to revise your paper and submit the same (revised) document again; you may submit the subsequent revisions as many times as you would like.  Just use the online submission link each time.

The processing time will vary depending on the number of submissions in the editing queue. On average, processing time takes about a week, but we recommend allowing ten business days to complete your request. Documents are edited on a first-come-first-serve basis, so during busy times of the year, the wait time will be longer.  If your edits do take longer than ten business days, the editor will notify you.

You may submit 30 pages per submission.  Multiple submissions are allowed simultaneously. To increase the amount of written work you can submit, you can remove figures, tables, and or images from the document and only submit the text for editing.

Format checking is a separate service from technical editing that ensures your thesis or dissertation is presented in the most professional manner possible (e.g., correct margins and spacing on all pages, consistent page numbering, proper organization, etc.). Format checking is required for all theses and dissertations before they are submitted, and most documents go through several format checks before they are ready for final submission.

The Writing Center’s services are only offered to undergraduates, while technical editing services are only offered to graduate students. The writing center offers peer writing consultations to provide feedback and guidance to undergraduate students during the writing process; the technical editing services edits and proofreads entire submissions by graduate students and then meets with the student to review the edited document.

Yes! Technical editing is offered year-round and we are happy to accept documents over the summer and winter breaks.  The only requirement is that you must be enrolled in the upcoming semester.

Yes, you will receive a either a PDF with proofreader marks or a Word document with tracked changes.

Please email the graduate office at grad@mst.edu to explain your situation; we will handle this on a case-by-case basis.

This is not required, but removing figures and tables can allow us to edit more pages at once. Some students remove figures and tables from the document but keep the corresponding captions as a placeholder.

You may have only one session per day, three sessions per week, and one scheduled appointment at any given time. Documents brought to the writing development sessions must not exceed 500 words, or two pages with double line spacing.  

 We require iThenticate scores on all editing submission forms to help avoid plagiarized documents and to raise awareness of plagiarism issues.

Currently enrolled S&T students can create an account for free through CAFE. Documents that are uploaded to the website are only accessible by the student (unless shared with another account) and are not searchable in iThenticate's database.

 To set up an account, complete the form here.

 If you have questions, please contact CAFE at cafe@mst.edu or (573) 341-6713.

Please note that iThenticate does not detect plagiarism; rather, it highlights exact wording that appears elsewhere in their database. Students can use these highlights as a guide for areas that need proper quoting, paraphrasing, summarizing, and/or citing. Text that is highlighted is not necessarily plagiarized, as iThenticate will also highlight quotes, bibliographies, titles, and common phrases. iThenticate will not detect images. It is the student's responsibility to ensure that all material is properly cited and necessary copyright permissions are obtained.

All documents are edited using standard proofreading marks. For hard copies: edits are made in pencil and comments are made in pen. For electronic copies: edits are made using a digital pen, and color differences are used to distinguish edits and comments. Occasionally, electronic versions will be edited through Word’s Track Changes. A guide to the proofreading marks we use can be found here.

Theses and dissertations: Yes.  Technical editing is optional, but if you choose to have your thesis or dissertation edited, you must adhere to the deadlines of the final semester in which you will graduate. The deadlines to submit a thesis or dissertation for editing are in early October, mid-March, and mid-June for the fall, spring, and summer semesters, respectively. If you submit your thesis or dissertation to the technical editing services, you cannot begin format checking until editing is complete.

For other documents: No. We accept documents year-round. However, keep in mind that the turnaround can take around 10 business days, so you will need to plan ahead if you are trying to meet the deadline of your publisher or conference.

We provide writing workshops every semester, and we also oversee Thesis & Dissertation Writing Camp, which is held twice a semester. We also hold a variety of events throughout the semester which may include topics such as formatting, using LaTeX, or using the Word thesis and dissertation templates. For additional resources, we recommend the Purdue OWL and Grammarly.