Proofreading, editing or ghostwriting? Where help becomes misconduct

1Proofreading

Proofreading checks spelling, grammar, punctuation and formatting in work that is otherwise finished and yours. Many universities allow it, often with limits. UCL's Academic Manual, as quoted in its AI guidance, permits a third party to "check areas of academic writing such as structure, fluency, presentation, grammar, spelling, punctuation, and language translation".

Read your own university's proofreading policy before anyone touches your work. Some limit who may proofread, some require you to declare it, and some exclude certain assessments.

2Editing

Editing goes further: rewriting sentences, reorganising paragraphs, cutting or adding content, strengthening arguments. The same UCL rule continues: it "may be considered Academic Misconduct if substantive changes to content have been made by the reviewer or software or at their recommendation".

The useful test is who made the decisions. If a reader points out a weak paragraph and you rewrite it, the decision and the words are yours. If the reader rewrites it, they are not.

3Ghostwriting

Ghostwriting is someone else writing all or part of the work you submit. It is misconduct at every university. In England, the Skills and Post-16 Education Act 2022 defines the services it bans as completing an assignment, or part of one, where the result could not reasonably be considered completed personally by the student, and "personally" includes any assistance your course permits. Ghostwriting for a fee is the core of what these laws target; see from essay mills to chatbots.

4Where AI editing tools fall

UCL lists proofreading and reviewing academic tone among assistive AI uses, where the student remains the author. Check your course's category. For feedback that stays on the safe side, see AI feedback on drafts.

5Three kinds of help, one paragraph

Take one weak paragraph, invented for this page, and three kinds of help.

Proofreading: a reader fixes "there" to "their", adds a missing comma and corrects the reference format. The paragraph says exactly what it said before.

Feedback: a reader writes in the margin that the paragraph makes a claim with no evidence. The student finds a source and rewrites the paragraph themselves.

Editing or ghostwriting: a reader rewrites the paragraph, adds a new example and sharpens the argument. The paragraph now reads better, but the decisions and the words are someone else's.

The first two leave you as the author. The third does not, whether the reader is a friend, a paid editor or a piece of software. If you are unsure which side of the line a kind of help falls on, ask your tutor before you accept it.

6What universities publish

Most universities publish a proofreading policy and an academic misconduct policy, and many now publish AI guidance by assessment. QAA's contract cheating guidance encourages universities to give students clear information on the risks. Search your university's site for "proofreading policy" and "academic misconduct", and check your module handbook. Then use the pre-submission checklist, and if AI was involved, read is using AI plagiarism?

More on this in Integrity.

7FAQ