Geology Editing and Proofreading Services

On the map, the contact between the two formations is a clean line running north-east across nine kilometres of ground. In the field, four hundred metres of it was seen in a stream section, a further kilometre inferred from a break in slope, and the rest drawn from an air photograph and an expectation about how the structure continues. The line looks the same everywhere. The evidence behind it does not.

We edit what geologists write — field mapping reports and accompanying notes, stratigraphic and sedimentological descriptions, structural analyses and cross-sections, petrological and geochemical papers, geochronology and its interpretation, mineral exploration and resource reporting, geotechnical and hazard assessments, and theses, memoirs and papers. Our editors work on the map and the confidence behind its lines.

A geological map is an interpretation drawn as a fact, and the failure is a boundary whose evidential basis is invisible. Every line has a pedigree — observed, inferred or assumed — and a reader making a decision needs to know which. We work through these so each boundary type is distinguished in the legend and in the text, since observed, inferred and concealed contacts carry entirely different weight and a uniform line hides that; so the observations underlying the interpretation are recorded separately from the interpretation, because the next worker may reinterpret the structure and cannot do so without the readings; so exposure is described as it was — the percentage of the area with rock at surface, the nature of the cover, the state of the outcrops — given that most maps are largely inference and pretending otherwise misleads; so structural readings are given with their location, number and spread rather than a single representative value; so the stratigraphic framework used is named with its source and any local departure from it; so ages are reported with the method, the material dated and what event that material's age constrains; and so alternative interpretations consistent with the same observations are stated. Reports written this way are still usable when somebody returns to the ground.

Everything you send is treated in confidence, including unpublished mapping, exploration data and reports prepared for clients. We are editors rather than geologists, and we offer no view on stratigraphy, structure or resource estimates. What we can do is make the confidence behind each line visible.