Proofreading a thesis presupposes large amounts of work, the most important of which is dealing with bad writing habits. After all, there would be nothing to correct if everybody wrote perfect texts from the first. But the current situation is that many students get lower grades than they could have only because their academic papers were not edited professionally. Proofreading acquires a whole new level of importance with theses: not only because they are longer than average essays, but also because these texts determine your academic future. Therefore, the consequences of proofreading a PhD thesis anyhow can be terrible. In this article, we are going to outline them and of course suggest a way to avoid every possible complication.
Thesis proofreading improves grammar
The most obvious reason for ordering proofreading is improving the grammar of the text, and it applies to theses as well, but only on a larger scale. Proofreading from Royal Editing, for example, will spot and eliminate the following grammatical blunders:
- mistakes in the use of English irregular verbs;
- misuse of tenses, including the failure to observe their sequence;
- mess-ups with Conditional and Subjunctive sentences;
- the wrong preposition choice;
- lack of subject and verb agreement;
- errors in indirect speech;
- incorrect punctuation and many more.
Some may argue that grammar means nothing when it comes to a large academic study, as though its results are what present interest, and not the way the work is written. But having been in this field for long enough, we can say for sure that grammar matters, especially in theses. If you want to gain academic reputation and avoid numerous revisions, you had better listen to what we say and submit a perfect text straight away.
Eliminating spelling mistakes and typos
While grammar mistakes often come from lack of knowledge, spelling ones usually (but not always) indicate lack of attention or concentration. Therefore the best way to avoid them in the first place is to organize working time and space efficiently so that when you write the thesis, nothing else distracts you.
If this was not done, the next question that probably interests you is how to correct spelling mistakes. Everyone can find plenty of guidelines on the Internet, including tips to use spelling checkers, but it is worth pointing out that none of these strategies gives 100% result. Only professional proofreading does, and to the extent that other services are no longer required.
Royal Editing deals with both typos and spelling mistakes, bringing the vocabulary to perfection. Why is it important for theses? Well, the story is the same as with grammar errors. Although technically it is your study that must be prior, nobody would be willing to pay attention to it if it has many writing imperfections.
Profound work on formatting
The requirements of academic formatting are pretty much the same for the majority of documents, but with large works it becomes more difficult to meet them. On the web you can easily google up how to format a thesis in MS Word and set to work, but there is no guarantee that the requirements are recent. It once again puts a student at risk of having to provide a revised document.
There is already a lot of proofreading work even if we consider solely formatting. That is why it gets difficult to perform the whole task without experts. If you still doubt how hard proofreading can get, this article will shed light on inside details that are known only in professional circles: https://royalediting.com/proofreading-work-how-difficult-is-it?
Setting references to rights
References present another difficulty in thesis editing. It is fairly easy to find a general guide on citing sources in academic writing, but applying it to theses is where it gets tricky. This kind of academic text usually has a long reference list on hand – around 80–120 sources. Of course, this number differs from major to major and from college to college, but the approximate figures illustrate the idea perfectly. In order to arrange all these sources, one would need plenty of time and patience.
At the same time, overlooking this step can be very dangerous. The failure to put thesis references to rights threatens with far more serious problems, such as accusations of plagiarism, which in turn can lead to expulsion. It is not that we try to intimidate our readers, but we believe in the wisdom that says forewarned is forearmed.
Before moving on to other improvements that proofreading offers, we suggest taking a look at these posts devoted to various academic editing services from our company:
- Editing Vs Proofreading: Main Distinctness
- The Value of Paper Proofreading Service
- Find The Best Professional Copy Editing
- Proof Read My Paper Overnight: Different Options
- Professional Editing Company
Other slight amendments
After discussing the most important aspects of proofreading a thesis, we can continue with less significant, yet necessary improvements. Usually we deal with them on the go in the process of proofreading, but in this post it is more convenient to dwell on them separately.
The most absurd enemy of a perfect academic text is emoji. For majority of students using emoji in papers sounds ridiculous, and we find it great that so many people understand the thinking behind. But some papers that we get for editing or proofreading do have emoji in them, which is rather sad. Certainly, we get rid of them immediately because they decrease the quality level of scientific content. And Royal Editing wants to give a piece of advice for everyone reading it now: do not ever use smiling faces in theses. If it is absolutely necessary to put an emphasis, resort to one of these techniques:
- inversion, or indirect word order;
- emphatic structures;
- parentheses.
One more little amendment that we want to mention here is increasing thesis writing vocabulary. Using the same words over and over again gives a sense of consistency to any text, but it mostly applies to specific terms. Apart from that, we recommend everybody to vary vocabulary and sentence structure across the document because it shows the author as an expert in writing. Otherwise a work may appear lacking in style.
So, let’s sum up. There are two ways of proofreading a thesis. Our special proofreading course (or a complete guide to editing a thesis that you can find by this link: https://royalediting.com/complete-guide-to-thesis-editing) will help those students who are willing to do this huge job by themselves. There we point out the main difficulties and ways to overcome them. But remember that if a thesis is proofread anyhow, the grade for it will be corresponding.
Then, if a great amount of proofreading without professional assistance does not sound appealing to you, and it is vital to get the highest grade for it, there is always an option of placing an order on a specialized website, such as Royal Editing. Our thesis editing services include a variety of amendments, the most important among which are grammar and spelling, formatting and references. After getting the thesis back, you will not recognize it in the finest sense of the word because we will tie up all loose ends. Testimonials on our main page show that what we claim here is true, so there is no need to hesitate before ordering from Royal Editing. Get familiar with these articles that will convince you in our professionalism even more: