RightMyWork is an AI copyeditor for academic and professional writing. You upload a Word document, the editor reads it from the title page to the appendices, and you receive a tracked-changes version back within a few minutes. Every suggestion lands as a tracked change you can accept or reject inside Microsoft Word, Google Docs, or any tool that understands the DOCX format.
This walkthrough explains what to prepare, which options actually matter, and how to read the result so your first edit goes smoothly.
What copyediting means here
Copyediting is the layer of editorial work that sits between proofreading and developmental editing. A proofreader catches typos. A developmental editor rethinks structure and argument. A copyeditor cleans up grammar, punctuation, style, clarity at the sentence level, and the small consistency rules that turn a draft into a publishable manuscript.
RightMyWork sits squarely in that copyediting layer. It will not invent new arguments, rewrite paragraphs in a different voice, or paraphrase your sentences into something more generic. It corrects what is in front of it, on the terms of the style guide you choose, and leaves your meaning untouched.
Preparing your document
File format
RightMyWork accepts Microsoft Word documents with the .docx extension. That is the modern Office Open XML format, which preserves your headings, citations, footnotes, headers, footers, comments, text boxes, and tracked changes through the round trip.
If your draft is in Google Docs, use File › Download › Microsoft Word (.docx). If it is in Pages, use File › Export To › Word. PDFs are not accepted, because PDF is a print-fidelity format that does not preserve editable structure cleanly enough for tracked changes to survive.
Size and word limits
Each upload can be up to 45 MB on disk and 150,000 words of content. The word counter looks at body text, footnotes, headers, footers, and text boxes, which is the same surface a human copyeditor would touch. The number you see on the upload screen is the number we bill against.
If your draft is larger than 150,000 words, split it into logical sections by chapter or part and upload them separately. The style guide and English variant you pick will be applied consistently across sections.
The five options that shape your edit
Before you upload, you pick five settings. Each one changes specific decisions the editor will make, so it is worth knowing what they actually do.
Style guide
Style guides are the published conventions that academic disciplines use to handle citations, references, headings, capitalisation, number formatting, and a long list of smaller details. Picking the right one tells the editor which set of rules to enforce.
RightMyWork supports the major styles in use today: APA 7th edition (common in psychology, education, and social sciences), MLA 9th edition (humanities), Harvard (used across many sciences and social sciences in author-date form), the Chicago Manual of Style 18th edition in both Author-Date and Notes-Bibliography variants (history, the arts, and general nonfiction), OSCOLA 5th edition (UK legal writing), IEEE (engineering and computer science), Vancouver 2nd edition (biomedical and clinical work), and AMA 11th edition (medical literature). If your work is general nonfiction with no field-specific style, the standalone Chicago option applies CMOS conventions broadly. A None option turns off citation-style enforcement entirely and applies only your English-variant conventions.
English variant
Four variants are supported: US English, UK English, Australian English, and Canadian English. The variant you pick controls spelling (color vs colour, organize vs organise), idiom, and small grammatical preferences. Australian and Canadian variants follow their own published conventions, which usually align more closely with UK forms but have specific exceptions.
Punctuation style
Two choices: US punctuation or UK punctuation. The difference is mostly about quotation marks and the placement of commas and periods around them. US punctuation uses double quotes as the primary mark and tucks commas and periods inside the closing quote. UK punctuation prefers single quotes as the primary mark and places punctuation outside unless the punctuation belongs to the quoted material. Pick the one your target publication expects.
Serial comma
The serial comma is the comma before and or orin a list of three or more items, as in “apples, oranges, and pears”. Some style guides require it. Some forbid it. The toggle lets you override the default for your chosen style if you have a house preference.
Editorial comments
When this is on, the editor adds Microsoft Word comments alongside tracked changes to explain its reasoning on judgement calls: why it queried a citation, why it suggested a clearer phrasing, where it noticed a structural inconsistency. With comments off, you receive a quieter document that contains only the tracked edits themselves. Most writers keep this on for the first few drafts and turn it off once they trust the editor.
Uploading
Once your settings are correct, drag your DOCX onto the upload zone on the home page, or click Choose a file. The editor counts the words in the file, shows you the total, and asks you to confirm. If you are not signed in, this is the point where you create an account or log in. Your settings are remembered through the sign-in step, so you do not have to pick them again.
After you confirm, the editor takes over. You can leave the page if you want. Progress is saved on the server, and you will see the result on the same job page when you come back.
While the edit runs
A progress page shows the stages as they happen: parsing the document, reading the citations, running the editorial passes, and packaging the tracked-changes file for download. Most documents finish in 3 to 5 minutes. Long manuscripts at the upper end of the size cap can take up to 15.
Reviewing the result
When the edit is ready, you receive a DOCX with tracked changes. Open it in Microsoft Word and use the Review tab to walk through each suggestion. Accept the ones you agree with. Reject the ones you do not. Tracked changes in Word are fully reversible, so nothing is permanent until you accept it and save.
Footnotes, headers, captions, references, and text boxes are all touched, so review the whole document rather than just the body. The Review pane in Word will surface every suggested change in order.
Where to go next
Once you have run your first edit, the Features article explains each option in more depth, including the Manuscript+ feature that fills in missing reference details automatically. If you are deciding which credit pack to buy, the Credit packs and plans article walks through the tiers and the no-expiry policy. If something does not behave the way you expected, Troubleshooting covers the common cases.