About/Contact

Who we are and what we do

Academic English Editing was founded in September 2006 and is headquartered in New York City. Its Editor-in-Chief, William Heidbreder, is an independent scholar and writer who founded the business after working for several years as a freelance academic editor. Our primary focus is on editing English-language scholarly papers and manuscripts for college/university students, graduate students, professors, and other scholars writing for university courses, or for scholarly books and journals. We will give your paper or manuscript close attention, while our prices are affordable to most students, graduate students, and professors at all levels, as we are always both efficient and thorough. Departmental funding can usually be accepted on arrangement. We are proud that most of our clients wind up returning again and again, and we also get many referrals from current and past clients, and offer discounts to referring clients.

We will make sure that your paper or manuscript is correct with regard to grammar and other issues of good English writing, and can also help with formatting to meet specific style requirements for footnotes, bibliography, and other matters. We are also attentive to the subjective aspects of good academic writing. One of these is argumentation: a good academic paper or book makes an argument, and this is a matter of both rhetoric (persuasion) and logic. Simply, an argumentative essay makes a claim, and then goes about showing that it is apparently true. In writing with any complexity, it is easy to do this wrong or badly and not notice it. We will.

Another issue that very commonly arises concerns references to theories or other texts or artworks. Extensive experience and a broad theoretical humanities and social science background is our greatest forte. Your paper might refer to some example, make some comparison, or cite some theory, and an astute reader who is well-educated in your field might think, “But what about….?” It is good to anticipate these moments; we can help you with that.

Personal statements for graduate or professional (law, medical, business, etc.) school, and for undergraduate university admissions, are also a major focus of our work. Possibly the most important thing that you will ever write, your personal statement should be done right. We are experts on them, and have helped people get into leading graduate schools including Harvard, Columbia, Stanford, and others.

We also do CVs, resumes, and cover letters, and visual/graphic formatting of resumes is available on request. We also edit business and government reports, grant proposals, web content, and other non-fiction English writing.

William Heidbreder, Editor-in-Chief

William is a writer and lover of literature and scholarly writings, theories, and arguments. He holds degrees in English from the University of California, Berkeley and Philosophy from the Sorbonne/Université de Paris 4, Paris. He considers that in the one case he learned to write scholarly essays on literature and art with some pizzazz, and in the other to analyze and write philosophical arguments with the characteristic rigor of French university writing, and an attention to logic acquired in part through the study of English and American as well as German and French philosophical texts; he considers himself equally at home in both of these. He also writes regularly on philosophy, film, politics, and other things; his writings can be seen at www.questionsducinema.com. He also is a translator from French to English. His personal passions are for French and Italian philosophy and theory since World War II and European cinema (West and East). He lives in New York, where he enjoys seeing films and art shows when he is not exorbitantly busy writing or working.