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Proofreading a dissertation needs an extremely cautious mind and careful eyes. It also demands expert knowledge and years of experience to come up with the best-quality proofreading services. Needless to say, it is not everyone’s cup of tea. Learn how professional proofreaders do it.
Do you wonder how proofreading is done, especially for theses and dissertations? Well, dissertation proofreading roughly means scrutinizing documents to check for errors and disruption of flow before the final submission.
Your dissertation or thesis is the ultimate result of several hours of research, reading, writing, and reviewing the overall writing. It is the final piece of work that paves the way to your qualification – first degree, masters or PhD.
For obvious reasons, your dissertation needs to be flawless and up to the mark for the final submission and it must be the best it can possibly be. It is not possible for writers to come up with an error-free dissertation, and hence a proofread service is a must to hire.
Is proofreading the same as editing? This is a query that pops up every now and then while looking for a relevant service. To put it in one sentence – no, they are not the same thing. Editing and proofreading involve different steps in the process of going through and checking a dissertation or journal.
While editing mainly involves major changes to content, structure and language, proofreading concentrates only on minor errors and inconsistencies.
Steps involved in proofreading:
Type of checking | Processes involved |
Content editing/proofreading | This involves basic revising of an early draft, making significant changes to the content including changing, adding or deleting some major sections. |
Line editing/proofreading | This includes revision of the language used to communicate and comprehend the matter of the dissertation. It might involve a change of words, phrases and sentences to reconstruct the entire paragraph thereby improving the flow of the text. |
Copy editing | Here, the editors polish each sentence to ensure that correct grammar, spellings and clear syntax are used along with a formal or stylistic overall flow to maintain the consistency. Copy editors or proofreaders don’t disturb or change the text. But if they find one particular sentence to be out of context, they might have a word with the author to work on it. |
Proofreading | This is nothing but carefully looking for any remaining errors like misspelled words, wrong punctuations, typos, wrong grammar or tense, and inconsistencies disrupting the entire flow. Here, the format is also checked and if required, corrected. |
You do not need to go through each of these steps for your dissertation. In fact, the selection of the right step depends on the type and length of text, though a dissertation mainly calls for proofreading only.
Points to note during the proofreading process:
Spelling and word selection | · Crosschecking homophones like there-their-they’re
· Wrong use of definite and indefinite articles (a/an/the) · Prepositions wrongly added |
Punctuation error | · Misused commas or missing them altogether
· Confusion in using hyphens, em dashes or en dashes · Wrong use of apostrophes |
Stylistic inconsistency | · Confusion between UK and US English
· Inconsistent capitalization of titles · Wrong sequencing of numbers |
Wrong Formatting | · Quotations and citations gone wrong
· Conflicting wrong indentation and spacing of paragraphs · Page numbers, headers and footers missed or misplaced |
Lack of confidence, while preparing a dissertation, is a serious thing to note, especially before the final submission. To ensure that your document is free of errors and completely ready to be submitted, you may hire either an editor or a proofreader depending on the policies of your organization as well as your own requirements.
There are several online proofreading services where you can mail your dissertation for an estimate to proofread it.
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