Substantive Editing for Cultural Anthropologists and Humanities Scholars

I specialize in substantive editing for humanities and qualitative social science manuscripts, helping authors to enhance clarity, voice, style, and intellectual impact. My edits are suitable for manuscripts before or after the peer review process.

A substantive edit combines heavy line/copyediting (edits that enhance rather than simply correct) with light developmental feedback. If you are looking for help with deep structure and reorganizing chapters, arguments, concepts, etc., then I recommend developmental editing as a first step. I welcome manuscripts by multilingual scholars writing in English, particularly where clarity, style, and argumentation need close editorial attention.

I have trained in the Chicago Manual of Style (US) and in developmental editing at the University of Chicago, and I can also edit for UK style where required.

Please note that this service best suits workflows where your publisher or journal provides light copyediting/proofreading after submission.

Finally, if you are just looking for light academic proofreading (correction with no editorial or expert feedback), a copyeditor offering a light edit may be a better fit for you, and I am happy to recommend other people in my network.

Credentials

I have edited hundreds of journal articles, with recent acceptances including articles published with the Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute, Cultural Anthropology, Social Anthropology, and Focaal.

My clients have published monographs with various university presses, including Cambridge University Press, Indiana University Press, Stanford University Press, Bristol University Press, University of Minnesota Press, I.B. Tauris, CEU Press, University of Toronto Press, and more.

You can find out more about my academic background and publications here.

Service description: Substantive Editing

Price: This service typically costs £45 or €50 per 1000 words.

Please note: I do not edit assessed work of any kind, and I do not edit research or job application materials. I edit books, book proposals, and journal articles only.

This service includes:

A combination of line/copyediting and developmental editing feedback (two passes)
First, I line edit the manuscript for clarity, style, readability, and accuracy.
I apply editorial style (Chicago Manual of Style or UK style)
I'll fix in-text author date references and copyedit footnotes, but I won't style or format the reading list or footnote references.
On a second read-through, I include any content feedback on issues I notice. I focus on smaller issues (transition sentences, opportunities to insert a sentence to make a point or argument clearer) rather than big-picture structural fixes—if you need the latter, you can book a developmental edit instead
I can also just offer line/copyediting if that's all you need
If you need reference list formatting as a separate service, this costs £2.50 per reference, and I usually outsource this job to another trusted editor in my network.

Dr. Leandra Bias, University of Bern

Andrew's detailed review crucially supported me in making decisions about how much and which work I was ready to do on the proposal and what publishers would be suitable. Within two weeks of revising the proposal based on his feedback I got two major UK university presses interested in reviewing my manuscript!

Dr. Pavel Brunssen, Heidelberg University

I have worked repeatedly with Dr. Hodges on scholarly manuscripts, and each project has been a huge success. His editing skills are tremendous! His meticulous eye for details and his scholarly background make him my favorite editor.

Talal Mohammad, St Antony's College, University of Oxford

Thanks to Andy's great editorial skills, quick turnaround time, and going the extra mile to read my work, my monograph gained immense praise from authorities in the field.

More recently, an article Andy evaluated made it into one of the top current affairs magazines.

Dr. Barbara Turk-Niskac, ZRC SAZU

In an ideal academic world, colleagues would foster a supportive environment, providing reciprocal assistance with writing projects. In real life, there´s Andrew. I now feel much more confident about my book project and am prepared to submit it to publishers.

Check out my editing manifesto:

Editing Otherwise

The Narrative Craft Collective

I'm a developmental editor and substantive/line editor. I collaborate with Dr. Marieke Krijnen for academic copyediting and reference list formatting, too.

Dr. Krijnen covers reference list formatting and academic copyediting, and we sometimes work as a team on combined line/copyedits, doing a separate pass each.

She specializes in academic copyediting, including reference list formatting.

Marieke Krijnen: Academic copyeditor

Marieke Krijnen is an academic copyeditor who works on journal articles and book manuscripts. She is an Advanced Professional Member of the Chartered Institute of Editing and Proofreading (CIEP) and has a PhD. Her academic background is in Arabic, urban studies, geography, and the political economy of the Middle East. Her PhD focused on the gentrification and financialization of the built environment in Beirut, and she obtained an MA from the American University of Beirut with a thesis on how the Lebanese state facilitates real estate investment.