Working with Non-Fluent Texts

On your first pass through the text, check for grammatical or spelling errors and sentence construction. Basically, the mechanical part of proofreading or line editing.

Watch out for any repeated quirks the writer has—verb tense errors, misuse of certain terms, misconstruction of certain phrases, etc. Recognizing these will help you edit the customer’s work (and means that you may be able to use ctrl/cmd+F to find any further instances of that error).

Correct any style guide issues that you spot: things like passive voice misuse, capitalization errors, the spelling of brand names, or the punctuation of bullets.

If there are any sentences you don’t understand, leave a comment identifying them as unclear.

In addition, check that the dialect (such as UK or US grammar/spelling conventions) matches the client’s stated preference.

At this point, you should be working on text that is comprehensible (except those passages you have identified as unclear) but perhaps a bit clunky and containing errors.

If you are editing, on this second pass through the text, focus on making sure the author’s arguments and main points read clearly and concisely. If it is part of the service, make suggestions to improve the structure and organization of the writing.

On your second pass, now that you’re more familiar with the text as a whole, you might have a better understanding of the “unclear” sentences you commented on in the first pass. If that’s the case, make changes according to the level of proofreading/editing required.

Do a final check for fluency and correctness; if necessary, by reading the text aloud. Ideally, the text should read as though it was written by a fluent English speaker.

You do need this final check, as it’s very probable that you have introduced some errors yourself. You may also notice some final tweaks and improvements you can make to the text.

At the end, run a final check for any double spaces—it’s always possible that one or two will have crept in!

Note that this three-step process is written for proofreaders and editors who will not see the document again after they have worked on it.

Of course, you may have clients that will work on the document again and send it for further revisions. If this is the case, you should follow this process with any further edits that you make.

This comment is used to offer an alternative in the comment box, normally when it could be one thing or another: “Do you mean ‘three apples’ or ‘four apples’?”

It’s a good idea to restrict the number of times you offer alternatives in this way, as it’s time-consuming for the editor and the client both. It’s often better to use the comment below…

This is the easiest, quickest, and most effective “unclear” comment in most situations. It should be used when you have a pretty good idea what the client is on about but don’t want to presume.

You will use this comment when you’ve made your changes directly to the text but have had to exercise a bit of professional judgment to make the sentences clear.

This should be used only when a sentence is utter word soup: you have absolutely no idea what the author is trying to say and can’t even think of a way to hazard a guess.

It’s likely that you’ll find one or two sentences like this in most non-fluent English texts (and in some fluent ones as well!). However, you should aim to use this comment very sparingly, as it does not add any value for the client.

If you find yourself needing to use this comment more often, then it may be that the text is unproofreadable or uneditable, and you will need to refer it back to the client.

The full recommended comment here is:

This paragraph is rather unclear. I have made changes to promote clarity, but have had to use my professional judgment in some instances. Please review and check my suggested changes carefully.

This comment can be used when you’ve had a whole paragraph requiring some more heavy-handed changes. We all get them sometimes!

This is just to ask the client to check your changes, so they don’t think you’ve just run roughshod over their text.

When you finish editing a page, take a look at your comments objectively. Is your page overloaded with repeated or unnecessary comments? Too many comments will make your editing look messy and overwhelming for the client. Generally speaking, you should aim to comment strategically and effectively.

Pinpoint the error as specifically as you can. It’s usually not helpful, for instance, to highlight an entire paragraph and comment to the author that its meaning is unclear. This is overwhelming to unconfident writers (who might not know what exactly is wrong) and irritating to confident writers (who want to fix the issue as quickly and economically as possible). As such, it’s better to highlight the specific issue and quickly explain what needs to be done to fix it.

When working on non-fluent English, some editors fall into the trap of overestimating their own cleverness and underestimating that of their client. This can lead to a misjudged tone of voice (ToV) in their comments:

• Too basic: For example, if the client has missed a definite article somewhere, this doesn’t necessarily mean they don’t know or understand the rules around definite articles in English. It’s not necessary to leave a comment explaining this in depth.
• Adopting a “tutoring” ToV: Coupled with the above is the risk of adopting a didactic, professorial ToV. Some clients value comments that help them improve their English, but these should be written in a neutral, professional but friendly ToV.

When leaving comments to explain English language issues, should this be required or appropriate, it helps to imagine you are talking to someone you know by association, but with whom you’re not that familiar—for example, a friend’s respected older sibling. They have their own knowledge and expertise; your expertise just covers another topic.

Remember that non-fluent English writers are writing about something (often quite technical or complicated) in another language to their native one. That’s something to be respected.

You may find that non-fluent writers mix up or leave out articles or prepositions (e.g., using an where the should be, or leaving out to).

Whether to use a/an or the can sometimes be a little unclear in particular contexts. For example:

She worked for an organization for four years.
She worked for the organization for four years.

Out of context, both sentences work; you need to use your judgment and analyze the surrounding text to spot whether the client has used articles correctly or not. If it’s really not clear, then leave a comment.

You should pay particular attention to whether acronyms require articles or not. Writers can inconsistently or incorrectly use an article with an acronym; for example, “SEC says that…” should be “the SEC says that”).

Similarly, preposition misuse is often a tricky thing to spot. Sometimes the choice of preposition can appear arbitrary, and if you’ve been editing a document filled with incorrectly used prepositions for a while, you may even start to question your own understanding of the English language! At this point, it’s best to start reading the text to yourself out loud, or to stop editing for a few minutes to refresh your brain.

Writers might use tenses inconsistently or incorrectly, such as using the past perfect (“He had finished the report”) instead of simple past tense (“He finished the report”). The blog Found in Antiquity puts the issue facing learners of English very clearly:

English has twelve tenses … That’s approximately double the number of tenses which are available in Greek (which has seven) and Latin (which has six).

See if you can find a native speaker of English who can tell you how many verb tenses there are or give examples of more than six of them. They’ll be few and far between.

Non-fluent writers may also avoid or misuse gerunds (i.e, -ing verbs that function as nouns). For example:

Incorrect: She’s an athlete, so to swim comes naturally to her.
Correct: She’s an athlete, so swimming comes naturally to her.

Incorrect: A research plan was constructed for testing the pilot.
Correct: A research plan was constructed to test the pilot.

Idioms are figures of speech (such as the expression “quit cold turkey”) that aren’t meant to be taken literally. This means they don’t always translate well from one language to another.

For this reason, you need to pay close attention to idioms you find in non-fluent writing. Non-fluent writers may use them inappropriately (e.g., in a formal business report) or incorrectly. You can choose whether to correct them or suggest an alternative, depending on your brief and your client’s preferred approach.

Sometimes you may find that the writer has innocently said something inappropriate through an unawareness of slang. For example, describing people who go for evening strolls as nightwalkers. Edit these out as appropriate, and if you feel comfortable doing so, leave a diplomatic comment to the client explaining why the term or phrase needed to be changed, providing a link to a dictionary definition if possible.

You may find that some writers use filler words that you can cut without changing the meaning of the text. Watch for the overuse of words such as actually, really, basically, just, furthermore, and moreover.

Transition words can often turn into filler words; for more on this, see the next example in the table.

Transition words or phrases are used to connect ideas and improve the overall flow of writing. When editing non-fluent English writing, it’s important to check that these words are used correctly.

For example, non-fluent writers often use on the one hand … on the other hand to list (instead of to compare and contrast) two things:

Incorrect: On the one hand, the report was handed in late. On the other hand, it was poorly written.
Correct: The report was handed in late and was poorly written.

(Alternative correct: On the one hand, the report was handed in late. On the other hand, it was well written.)

This all usually happens because the writer has been given examples of ways to “make their writing flow” by using transitional words and phrases, without any further guidance regarding these words’ proper use. This can lead to them exploring the thesaurus for different alternatives (“forasmuch,” “hitherto”) or using common connecting words unnecessarily or incorrectly (“however,” “meanwhile,” and “besides” are good examples of this).

You may find that you have to make word substitutions based on the text’s tone and level of formality. Consider these sentences in a report on gas prices:

In May 2023, gas import prices became cheaper than in the previous month.
In May 2023, gas import prices were lower than in the previous month.

The alternative preserves the original meaning but in a more formal tone.

Another common issue is the use of contractions; these should not be used in academic or scientific texts. Whether to use them in business content depends on the tone and purpose of the business document.

Sometimes, the finer points of an argument may get lost due to the sentence structure the client uses. For this reason, some understanding of the client’s native language can be useful. It helps to be aware of common structural differences and localized idioms.

After a while, though, even if you don’t have any familiarity with the client’s native language, you’ll start to recognize certain habits in English usage among native speakers of certain languages.

Native speakers of some Southeast Asian languages, for example, can show a tendency to put the adverbial phrase at the end of the sentence, which can cause confusion when there are two things happening in the sentence.

Compare the following two sentences and note the change in meaning when a fronted adverbial is used:

She wished he would go away sometimes
Sometimes, she wished he would go away.

Another commonality is the habit of introducing the subject of the sentence before describing it:

Original: As for the ride comfort and road-holding improvement, the main strategies are as follows …
Edited: The main ride comfort and road-holding improvement strategies are as follows …

It’s likely that a text written by a non-fluent English writer will show a combination of these and other issues. For this reason, you might find a certain amount of sentence restructuring is required.

Here’s an example of text that incorporates several of the elements detailed above:

In the last months, we have noticed really much more asthma on the kids. On the one hand, this was possible potential result of pollution from the close clothing factory and the more cars in the road.

We could edit it to something like this:

In recent months, we have observed an increase in the number of children with asthma. This could be the result of pollution from the nearby clothing factory and more cars on the road.

Here, we’ve edited the statement to improve the fluency and reduce wordiness, while retaining its original meaning overall.