The Articled Human Editorial Process
This document improves with every step through eight stages and three roles. Between the order form and the delivery email, here is what happens, and who holds the file at each stage.
How the Human Editorial Process Starts
It begins with a form and an editor reading it. There is no need to create an account or sit through a sales call. The brief arrives, the commissioning editor reads it on the same workday, and a $10 per 100 words quote comes back via email with our 1% addition. One thousand words equates to $101, and the writer takes home $100.
Assignments are based on topic, not availability. The editor who requests a piece on freight insurance will find someone who’s written on logistics or insurance before, and will hold the order for a day rather than assign it on to the next free person. If a brief is lacking in detail about the audience, format, or purpose, the brief is sent back for clarification before anyone begins draft writing.
For anything more than approximately 1,200 words, the writer submits a detailed outline and waits for the thumbs-up. This is the cheapest point in the whole chain to make a choice. Changing a submitted outline is a paragraph of email. Changing a finalized feature is a rewrite, and a rewrite is where you run into tight deadlines.
- The brief intake consists of a form and various questions the editor has.
- The commission is accepted when a quote is confirmed via email, and the writer is assigned as per their subject fit.
- Sign off of outlines is done for larger pieces prior to any prose being done.
- Research and drafting — sources opened and read, then the piece written by hand.
How the Human Editorial Process Reviews Every Draft
Reviews analyze writing in two discrete chunks of time, for the two types of attention the two tasks demand. The first, a structural pass, deals solely with the text, and only insofar as the text fulfills the brief, the argument is in correct sequential order, and every section is warranted. Sections undergo addition and/or removal at this stage. A reviewer is not likely to notice if Section four is a repetition of Section two, if they are busy correcting commas.
The second pass, the line pass, is done on the micro level. It reviews each sentence individually, adjusts wording, checks the rhythm, US English spelled words, follows the house style on numbers/dates, and corrects small mistakes the writer does not notice after several hours on the document. The third of these passes is done at the macro level, and checks to ensure each stated claim has a source. In this pass, the reviewer opens a small sample of the source and citation links.
Each modification is shown as a suggested edit for the writer to either accept or criticize, and this process is unlike any other. It’s important to keep track of who is primarily in charge of what. Original authors maintain ownership and the last word on what they chose to put into their work. This encapsulates the main difference between editing and rewriting someone else’s work.
Where we are small, we say so
With small jobs, the commissioning editor is usually the reviewer. We have a hard and fast rule: a writer cannot be their own reviewer.
How the Human Editorial Process Ends With Final Checks
Once the writer has finalized the edits to the draft, it will go through our verification process, which includes running the draft through twelve AI detection and originality tools, including Originality.ai, GPTZero, Turnitin, Copyleaks, Winston AI, and Copyscape. We do not selectively run the sweep, dislike the outcome, and ignore the report. The reports join the email delivery list.
A flag does not initiate an automatic rewrite. It initiates a conversation with the writer to understand the draft. That’s because the tools score on statistical patterns and plain, well structured, prose on a subject written in a technical language can be highly scored as poor and be entirely human. If that concern is valid the piece will be rewritten or reassigned. If not, then the report will be finalized with a note explaining our concern.
Within three days, your final draft will be delivered to your inbox with no attribution, as you own the copyright. You may expect two complimentary revisions within fourteen days. Revisions will be completed by the same writer.
- Verification sweep — twelve detection and originality tools, full reports included.
- Delivery — three days via email, copyright to you.
- Revisions — two rounds by original writer, fourteen days.
Human Editorial Process FAQs
A reviewing editor, who did not write the draft, editing the piece through a structural pass and then a line pass. On shorter orders, that editor is frequently the same person who commissioned the piece, since we are a small company. The writer has never reviewed their own work, regardless of the order length.
These tools cannot be utilized for writing, outlining, editing, searching, or translating text. The only step these applications take in the chain is to analyze completed text. It is acceptable for a spell-checking program to underline misspellings; a program that rewrites entire sentences is unacceptable, and it is therefore disabled.
Delivery occurs up to three days after a brief is confirmed. Most of this time will be devoted to research and drafting. Longer projects will take the full three days and use an outline. We will inform you if a tight deadline will be impossible to fulfill.
Questions go through the commissioning editor. This keeps one person answerable for the brief and prevents contradictory guidance from two different people. If a piece is technical enough that a direct conversation would save a round of revisions, let us know, and we’ll arrange it.
That is an editing failure rather than a revision request, so it doesn’t use one of your two rounds. Provide comments on where the piece went wrong, and the structural pass will be carried out against the brief. Genuinely missed briefs almost always go back to a question that was not asked during the intake.
For pieces that are greater than about 1,200 words, sure. Just make a request for one. Under that word count, it usually takes more time to approve an outline than it does to write it. It is also the best time to request additions to the article scope, since it is less expensive to do that at this stage.
No, we do not offer rush delivery. It takes three days for a person to do the research, writing and for another to complete an editing review and verification. Charging for an editing pass removal would make you buy a worse product that’s faster.
No surprises here. This is what publication is like with a real desk. This is how a lot of online writing has looked without a stop at a desk along the way. The stages mean that a piece goes through two people and one of those people is looking to find problems.
Content a person actually wrote
$10 per 100 words, and the writer keeps all of it. Our 1% sits on top, 0.5% goes to trees, and no generated text appears anywhere in the process.