Completing a dissertation is no small feat. Months of toiling over material and trying to find the way to convey a multitude of important points can leave you feeling exhausted. However, simply completing your preliminary writing does not mean that your dissertation is finished. Most doctoral programs require that a professional dissertation editor read and edit your work before submission, so that it is prepared for publishing. However, not all programs require this. This dissertation editor would like to pass along a few tips on how to help ensure the proper editing of your dissertation.
While it is best to enlist the services of a professional dissertation editor, the computer offers an unlimited supply of help to allow you to clean up your work. It isn’t just the Internet; newer versions of Microsoft Word and Works offer not only spell check, but grammar checks as well that are wonderful at picking up things that commonly go unnoticed, such as split infinitives. This is a commonly overlooked error (e.g., “I am often helping Mom in the kitchen,” should be “I often am helping Mom in the kitchen.”), and the grammar/spell check features will alert you to this problem. Please note that the spell check will not pick up when a word is spelled correctly but used incorrectly. For example, “Dad and I are looking for a book to reed.” This sentence should be, “Dad and I are looking for a book to read,” but regular spell check would recognize that reed is also a word, and is not spelled incorrectly. It is important to run both a grammar and spell check if your software is capable.
The Internet offers plenty of resources to help you get your dissertation ready, and these should be utilized. What style guide governs your paper? MLA? APA? Chicago? Turabian? Numerous colleges and universities have synthesized these style guides for their students’ use. Simply Google your style guide and you will come up with several lists of websites that offer cheat sheets on your dissertation’s formatting and style. A great tip from this insider is to do a Google search of your style with the questions that you have. You can get an instant answer! For example, if you are working in MLA style, and you have a question as to the style of citation for a book with one author, you can Google, “MLA book one author.” The answer is just a click away!
Despite the numerous resources available, it can be hard not only to weed through them, but also to view your work with the fresh pair of eyes necessary to get the job done. A final review by a dissertation editor is always the safest bet. This ensures a polished, professional finished product. Let the dissertation editors on staff with First Editing allay your dissertation anxiety and assist you in getting your manuscript publication ready.
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- How to outsource your dissertation editing online
- How to find a good dissertation editor – what to know BEFORE you buy!
- What is Dissertation Editing? By a Professional Editor
- The First Step to Editing
- Basic copy editing takes teamwork
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