An authors' editor is a language professional who works "with authors to make draft texts fit for purpose". He or she edits manuscripts that have been drafted by the author (or authors) but have not yet been submitted to a publisher for publication. This type of editing is called author editing, to distinguish it from other types of editing done for publishers on documents already accepted for publication: an authors' editor works "with (and, commonly, for) an author rather than for a publisher". A term sometimes used synonymously with authors' editor is “manuscript editor” which, however, is less precise as it also refers to editors employed by scholarly journals to edit manuscripts after acceptance (in place of the term copy editor).