Academic Integrity Offices Editing and Proofreading Services

Nine days before final exams, a student opens an email with a regulation number in the subject line and a portal link in the body. The letter tells him that an allegation of academic misconduct has been made about an assessment, cites regulation 6.4.2, and gives him five working days to respond. It does not say which passages are in question, what regulation 6.4.2 actually says, or what the panel is able to decide. He reads it four times, forwards it to his family, and begins writing a response to a charge he has had to guess at.

The documents we edit for Academic Integrity Offices

Allegation and notification letters to students reach us more often than anything else in this field. Procedure documents and regulations, evidence summaries, case reports, and panel and hearing documentation follow. Outcome letters and sanction explanations, appeal information, and decision letters make up much of the rest, along with guidance for graders on identifying and reporting concerns. Guidance for students on what counts as an offense comes to us as well, with citation and collaboration guidance, generative AI and permitted-use policies, and contract cheating investigation material. We also edit training for panel members and the reporting that goes to departments and to the institution's governing body. Our editors check that a student can tell what the accusation is and what happens next.

What the editing involves

The allegation letter should state the specific charge in its first paragraph, in ordinary words, with the assessment and the passages at issue attached rather than referenced. A student sent a portal link and a regulation number has to assemble the case against himself before he can answer it. The regulation should be quoted in the letter and not merely cited, because a student reading "regulation 6.4.2" has learned nothing, while a student reading the sentence itself can see what conduct it describes. We form no view on whether the regulation was breached. The panel does that, and we work on whether the letter tells the student what is alleged.

The full range of possible outcomes belongs in the same letter, including the most serious one. A student who first hears at the hearing that expulsion is available has not been given notice of it, and a decision reached on notice that thin is the one that returns on appeal months later, after he has already withdrawn. The deadline, the right to bring a supporter, and the availability of the student advocacy office should sit together in one paragraph rather than in three places a page apart. Tone carries weight here too. A letter that opens "your plagiarism in this assessment" describes the conduct as established rather than alleged, and hands the student's representative a line to read back to the panel.

Confidentiality and the limits of our role

Everything you send us is treated in confidence, including case files and material about identifiable students. We are editors, not academic officers or attorneys, and we offer no opinion on any allegation, finding, sanction, or regulation. What we can do is make the letter say plainly what the student is answering.