This is the first in a series of reviews of other academic copyediting sites, both fair and foul. And we start with foul.

Avoid this site: The Academic Editor.

The eye, dragging itself through a turgid morass of stock photography – in which grinning graduates, nubile and successful, doff their mortarboards to the misty mountains – clutches finally at the ‘welcome’ message, positioned where the eye does not naturally fall on the page.

And one reads the message with dread:

Our Services are specifically designed for each individual and are provided by doctoral professionals whose sole purpose is to achieve your desired outcome

The paragraph is meaningless. Editing services tend to be generic: the suggestion that they design them each time afresh is space-filling marketing nonsense. And the reference to ‘doctoral professionals’ conjures up an image of academic versions of Tarantino’s Gimp.

More prosaically, the capital ‘s’ in ‘services,’ and the missing period, bode ill for this self-proclaimed “#1 dissertation and thesis consulting service in the world.”