Proofreading

Your guide would help you throughout your PhD, but do not expect that all practical advice would necessarily come from the guide. As it happened in the case of Venugopal. When he was doing his PhD from VTU, his guide was supportive and supervised efficiently throughout. During the final year, when he was closer to thesis submission and final viva, his guide told him to prepare well for the viva and suggested tips to handle the defence well. However, like how I said before, not all practical advice would come from your guide. He did not mention him about thesis proofreading.

Venugopal was in touch with other scholars from the university and during his regular interactions with them, he understood that it was very important for him to get proofreading done for his thesis. He acted pro-actively upon some wise advice and took external help from experts for thesis proofreading. And to his surprise he discovered that many of the sentences in the thesis were meaning just the opposite of what he wanted to say. This was largely because of English being a second language for him, sometimes he made the wrong choice of words or sequencing of the sentence which completely turned around the meaning of the sentence. Other than that minor spelling and typo errors also altered the meaning of the sentences. Here are some example paragraphs from Venugopal’s proofread thesis:

In the short term, output in the goods market is determined by the level of consumer demand. The demand for goods is itself a result of a number of different factors including the confidence that consumers have in the economy (which says whether they are happy to spend on non-essential goods or would rather save for the rainy days they may perceive to be ahead), as well as fiscal and monetary policy.

The major defining factor that we will consider here is the disposable income. Naturally, the more disposable income a person has, the more they will spend and the more goods they will consume. Economists usually consider that a (positive) linear relationship between disposable income and consumption exists of the form

It came as such a relief to him that the external and internal reviewers did not have any issue with the quality of his work and his thesis got cleared in the first go itself.  He thanked that good sense prevailed on time and he took the right decision to go for proofreading. Else, surely the completion of his PhD would have been delayed by a year, at least.

So, to get perfection in your thesis and to ensure your articulation is impeccable, meaning what you want to say, proofreading is a must!

Many years of hard work, research, lengthy discussions, investigations, and experiments go in the creation of a Ph.D. thesis which is the key requirement for a Ph.D. degree. With all this going behind the creation of a thesis, there is still an element of risk of rejection and failure when the thesis is submitted for review at the University. The reasons for rejection can be one or many of these, faulty grammar, spelling and punctuation flaws. All the details that the researcher puts up in the thesis must reflect accuracy and authenticity. With such high level of quality standards required for a good thesis, at least another set of eyes should go through it, particularly for the purpose of proofreading and editing.

The proof-reader, an expert in improvising the quality of the thesis gives tips to the writer to improve the thesis with respect on repetitions, titles, headings, etc. the suggestions that are given help the scholars to enrich the quality of the thesis and give more appropriate headings and sub-headings.

Proofreading comes to more help, at the last stage of Ph.D. writing.  When they are nearing the final submission, an expert helps in sailing through it more smoothly. Researchers must never ignore or show negligence towards proofreading. Each and every word, page, and element of the thesis should be checked thoroughly so that none of the errors go unnoticed, but the document is conforming to the guidelines given by the university. An experienced proofreader is always the right person to do this.

A lot of universities do not offer the Ph.D. scholars with guidelines and academic support. Because of this, the researchers fail to meet the unspoken standards of quality laid by the university, and it expects from the scholars for good grades. Many times the grades of the researchers suffer because of this and proofreading by a professional agency comes to help and rescue here as it meticulously and critically examines the document, identifying the inconsistencies that exist in the content and formatting.

Lastly, when you are on the last leg of your Ph.D., there are numerous deadlines to be met and living by all of them takes a toll on the stress level of the majority of students. The best choice here would be to get expert hand involved in the proofreading task so that the document is improvised to the best of its potential with suggestions that can further help the scholar to improve the thesis.

A final proofreading comes as a must before submitting research paper. A student pursuing PhD should always be prepared to handle the task of proofreading in a proficient manner. He should know how to proofread his own edits. Proofreading will remove any chance of error at the 11th hour. It will make your paper look clean and hence will enhance readability among readers. The submission of a flawless report will also enhance your chance to stand our as a winner after submitting your final document. Let’s discuss the points where and how you can become experts in proofreading.

Read thoroughly what you have written:  You need to make sure that you read it thoroughly what ever you have written as there is no point in taking any last minute risk. As it’s an academic paper, it will decide your future. No matter that if you have hired a proofreader even, you should still go through the entire exercise on your own. Read each and every line in detail to avoid any kind of mistake.

Keep an eye on grammar, punctuation and vocabulary: As you expect your paper to be well-written and well-documented, you need to have a quality language and grammar usage for the same. Also, make sure that your spelling, punctuation, and vocabulary are correct in each and every line. Hence be extra cautious and avoid any bottleneck. Try to check that there shouldn’t be any silliest of the mistakes in your paper.

This is how proofreading promises an error-free document: 

Proofreading enhances the quality of a write-up and document
Proofreading eliminates errors
It makes your academic paper more valuable
Proofreading and editing is the key to successful submission
It adds the last touch to your document
It polishes the document before final submission
Poorly framed sentences and wrong usage of preposition can be corrected by proofreading

You may have spent months or even years to complete your thesis. The chances are that you have spent almost a lifetime in getting your thesis right. Therefore, it is imperative that you go for the services of a good thesis proofreading company that will give you a version of your thesis that is completely error free.

Heavy competition

Since the competition amongst students is increasing exponentially every day, it is imperative that the standards of your writing are both high as well as qualitative. Your success will ultimately depend on the quality of the document you produce in front of your examiners. It should, in fact, reflect the analysis you undertook and all the efforts you had put in while writing your thesis. In fact, your thesis could be your opportunity to get published for the first time in your life.

Strenuous process

Thesis editing is a strenuous process since there are several hundreds of pages to be edited. In fact, hours, days, and weeks spent on research could go waste if you do not get your thesis edited. Moreover, you would need to collate all your work when you present it. Trying to complete your thesis on time will be stressful since you have to do even more work by editing to make it error free. Moreover, your tired eyes may not allow you to focus on the thesis, making it difficult if not impossible to correct the errors.

Protect your work

Even the smallest errors in referencing style and grammar could cost you years of work and also your admission at the university. Do you want even the smallest errors in grammar to stall your career before it can take off? A great thesis proofreading service will, on the other hand, elevate your work to the level of a paper that has been written professionally.

There are many research students who cannot work on their project documents without any professional assistance from an academic editor or proofreader. However, not every student may require review help from an editor. If you are also confused about availing or not availing the services of a professional, then here are some suggestions to guide you in this regard.

Initiate your judgment process by assessing your writing quality. While it is all right to edit your research documents on your own, it is important to take professional help when you feel that you have a tight hand at grammar or style rules. Even if you are a native speaker of the language, there may be some types of mistakes that are left in every writer’s draft. Proofreading by a professional can remove all such types of errors and make your work flawless totally.

Apart from this, you might not have a keen eye for details. In such a case too, you may leave glaring errors in your paper or dissertation. Thus, a proofreader can come handy in that situation. He/she will take care of even your spacing and punctuation errors that are not easily noticeable. If your institution has asked you to use certain professional styles for formatting your work and you are unaware of these, then professional proofreading can be an effective tool for you.

A professional proofreader can make you comply with the specific style manual you need to follow. Further, they can also correct your citation and referencing styles according to this manual. If you are a busy bee and do not have time to devote to improve the presentation and clarity of your content, then you can again go for professional proofreading assistance. It can save you time and give you a formatted paper that is well presented and impressive.

While you may be a native writer with an effective grasp on the language, it is still critical to edit your research paper before submitting it to a journal for publishing purposes. Your written work may have ignored or unintentional errors that can only be corrected after you review it thoroughly and correct all linguistic, stylistic and formatting mistakes. It is also very important to structure and organize your content in a meaningful manner.

Editing a research paper like this may not only make it more readable, but may also add value to it. Your target readers can be highly impressed if your work is neat and tidy, as well as concise and comprehensive. It is important that your ideas and arguments presented in your paper are well understood by your readers. You can only convey your ideas rightly if you have connected and woven them nicely like a story. Starting from introduction to conclusion, your content needs to make sense at every step in your document.

Editing can help you in presenting your content logically. This logic may go missing at various points while writing your first draft. This makes editing all the more important. Through editing, you can additionally refine your language and polish your content. This will sound effective when you start conducting a review of your written draft. You may find several occasions within your work when you would want to bring a change to the vocabulary, presentation or sentence structure.

When you actually make these changes in your initial draft, your work carries on being polished. Bringing changes to the presentation of facts can also enhance your paper’s presentation. This is another part of editing where you highlight the significance of your study and its impact on your field of research. Thus, editing can do many wonders to your work. Never forget to edit your research paper before submitting it.

How easy it is to do one’s own proof reading? It is easy to revise but surely the final checks to do independently aren’t easy. Proofreading is not one of the easiest things to do. A lot of writers do end up giving them a benefit of doubt and check what they think they must have written rather than what they actually have. The main trick to effective proofreading is to attempt to check the text in a way it appears unfamiliar and strange. So much so that for that while you believe as if someone else has written it.

Here are some of the tricks that may help:

Take a break before you begin: Give yourself a break before you start proof reading. Stay away from the work at least for a week. That helps to bring in some distance between your work and you, helps you to look back at it with an objective eye and find out mistakes that you may overlook otherwise.

Work on a Hard Copy: More often than not, a printout gives a better view than a soft copy. At times changing the mode in which you look at the text helps to give it a new dimension. Try to even change the font style and size. It may sound like a bizarre thought to you, but text with a new look gets a new feel.

Read out loud: sometimes syntax errors or misspelled words or grammatical miss outs get left over. Reading it aloud helps to identify these and also the punctuations, you might not focus at otherwise.

Make another person read it: It is a good idea to make another person read it, it is simpler to apply this trick for a co-authored paper

Make use of a scale/ruler: a reading rick we practiced as children is more effective than anything else. The ruler does the indirect imposition to go line by line rather than allowing you to skip lines

Specifically focus on the punctuations: While reading the text, circle on the punctuations, the full stops and the commas. Rechecking the circles helps to be sure about their placing.

Above all, let’s not forget to stay away from the usual pitfall of rushing with things. It is imperative and necessary to find out the time to proofread your paper before submitting. Proof reading does matter as it helps to not create a slack impression about your work.

At times you may wonder how people are able to complete an impeccable and perfect thesis for their PhD. At time you may even feel envious of them, but the truth is, if they can do it, you can do it too. Writing a PhD thesis is a major task and an extremely dreaded one. People who are on the verge of starting their thesis, often hear of horror stories where people fail at their thesis writing and usually people get badly affected by these stories. There are some points that should be noted before starting a thesis so that it can be completed peacefully and successfully.

First and foremost, at all times, avoid story tellers! You do not want to start some work with a prejudice. Start with a clean slate and make your own story, do not live the story that belongs to someone else. Your views and ideas about a thesis may be completely different and your approach may be a more practical one.

Choose your topic wisely and stick to it! Once you know the topic of your study you may have a clearer idea about how you will go about studying it. Choosing a topic of your interest will help make the entire process of the study easier and more worthwhile.

Keep the style of explanation diverse. Include references, citations, illustrations, inferences, statistics, graphs and other such explanatory forms. This will keep the reader interested and it will show the amount of effort you have put in your study.

Keep the language and style of writing simple. This will not only help people in understanding your work better but it will also help you in avoiding petty mistakes.

And, have the work proofread, once you are done with the thesis work, make sure to have it checked by someone who belongs to your field of study. This helps in maintaining an accuracy in work.