True or false: the purpose of editing is to make sure that small mistakes don’t get in the way of the ideas and meaning of your paper.

True.

Explanation:

Editing is when there is a need to refine and make changes to one's works. Be it in academics or even just a simple story writing or even any form of writing, editing makes it better and more composed than the 'imperfect' work.

So, when any written work has the need to be edited, then there is the possibility of the work having mistakes and improvements needed to be done. The very purpose of the process or need of editing is to make sure that what had already been written doesn't have any mistakes. And if there are any mistakes, they are remedied so as not to disrupt or get in the way for the main ideas or even distort the meaning of the whole text/ paper.