Blog Post

How to Proofread your Thesis or Dissertation

Bridget Gevaux • 26 February 2020

Proofreading your thesis or dissertation

Your dissertation, research paper or PhD thesis is the result of many months, if not years, of hard work. It is the most important piece of work and culminates years of study, whether it’s a first degree, a master’s or a PhD.

It is the final, and possibly the most important, piece of work that will determine the final grade of your qualification.

It is, then, fair to say that your work should be presented in the highest standard possible before submitting. That doesn’t just include the contents of your work, but also how it is presented.

You may have spent months, or years, presenting your content, reading, writing, and more writing, carrying out thorough research, and presenting your argument in a clear and logical manner. It would be a terrible disservice to yourself if your work is downgraded because of bad spelling and grammar, or inconsistent layout and formatting of your document.

That is why it is worth taking the time to proofread your thesis or dissertation, or get someone else to proofread it for you, perhaps a family member or another colleague.

If English is not your first language, or if writing is simply not one of your strengths, then this is where a professional proofreader comes in. If you have a learning difficulty such as dyslexia, then your educational institute may recommend that you use the services of a professional proofreader prior to submission.

So, I have put together a list of recommendations to refer to before submitting your work, and to help you get those grades you deserve.

Please read more about my student proofreading services.

1 Allow plenty of time before submission

If you decide to proofread your document yourself, it’s always a good idea to give yourself a break from it for a few days first, even just one day. That way, you can approach your work with a reasonably fresh pair of eyes and pick up those silly errors that you might have missed first time around.

If you do decide to use a proofreader, don’t wait until you have finished writing before trying to find one. Many proofreaders are booked up for weeks at a time, especially around end of term time. There will always be some who can promise a fast turnaround, but there is no fast route to proofreading a thesis of over 40K words! Proofreading is a slow and careful process. So, as a general guide, you should allow your proofreader a day to proofread 5000 words.

Once your proofreader is finished and has sent your files back, be prepared to work through any comments or queries the proofreader may have made as they worked through your document. These often include queries as to intended meaning of sentences or phrases, which may need rephrasing/rewriting and which, again, takes time. And then you need to allow time for printing and binding.

2 Thesis structure

Once you have had a break for a while, look again at the overall structure. Check that the introduction summarises your work properly. Check that there a logical progression through the various sections. You might have carried out lots of editing over the previous week – check that you haven’t mistakenly left any important points out that might affect the logical flow of your argument.

3 Formatting

Check that your document is formatted correctly. For instance:

Are your headings and subheadings all in the same style? Are they all the same font size etc?
Is the automatic numbering of headings/paragraphs consistent? It is very easy to miss errors in automatic numbering, especially the subheadings.
Have your checked the numbering of the tables, figures to ensure they are consistent? For example, if you are referring to Table 3 on p. 322, check it is on the correct page!
Have you checked that the captions of said tables and figures are correct?
Table of Headings. Is the ToH correctly set out? Have you updated it to ensure all page numbers are correctly displayed?
Is your page numbering set out correctly? Have you even inserted page numbers?

4 Consistency in style

It is often a good idea to create a style sheet as you go along. This will include:

Use of capitals and hyphenation
How you use numbers to ensure they are consistent throughout, for example using words for numbers from one to nine, but figures from 10 and over.
British English or American English spellings? Whichever style you use, it must be consistent, for example behaviour/behavior.
Consistency in -ise/-ize word endings. Something that just about every proofreader sees is the mixture of realise or realize!
How you use italics – particularly important in scientific and technical writing.

A proofreader will use various tools to help tidy up such things as double spaces, removing unnecessary spaces, ensuring you are using single/double quotes consistently, changing dashes to n-dashes, searching for paragraphs without closing punctuation, etc.

5 Spelling, punctuation and grammar

One of the final, and most important, things you must do is run a full spelling and grammar check. However, be warned! It will catch the obvious errors, but will not catch them all.

Your spellchecker will not pick up such things as homophones – words that sound the same but are spelt differently. Such examples are site/sight, bear/bare, sow/sew. Neither will it catch words that are simply wrong, eg form instead of from, god instead of good (and I have seen this error many times).

6 Acronyms and abbreviations

One of the most common issues I come across when proofreading academic papers is the wrong or inconsistent use of acronyms or initialisms.

An acronym (or initialism) is a shortened or contracted form of a term that is used in its place.

When a term is first used, it is written out in full with the abbreviation after. Then, the abbreviation is used throughout the paper. Let’s use the BBC as an example. The first time we come across the term we would write the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC). The abbreviation is written afterwards in brackets and then you would continue to say BBC throughout.

If your document is a lengthy thesis or a book, you might decide to define an acronym again in full the first time it is mentioned in each chapter.

If you are using a lot of acronyms or abbreviations, it is sometimes useful to provide a list at the front of your thesis or book. This not only helps your reader to refer back to a defined term, but it will help you to cross reference your defined terms as well.

A good practice, if you want to ensure you are consistent in your paper, is to do a global search for the full term and then replace it with the abbreviation.

Referencing systems

You will no doubt have used a reference system in your thesis or dissertation. Whatever style you have used, it is important that you check it is consistent throughout. For instance,

et alia - ensure that it is written et al. throughout. Very often the full stop is missing, so you might want to do a full global search for et al (including a space after the al).
if using the author-date system (eg Harvard), ensure all in-text citations are consistent (Ford, 2018). If using a comma, ensure a comma is used consistently.

Check the bibliography to ensure it is in alphabetical order and formatted properly according to your reference system.

Again, these things will (or should) be picked up by your proofreader, but if you are proofreading your document yourself these are little things you need to check.

Each reference system, whether Harvard, APA, MLA, etc, will have its own style which you need to adhere to. An excellent source that I often refer to, especially for Harvard referencing, is the Anglia Ruskin University website:

https://library.aru.ac.uk/referencing/referencing.htm

https://www.citethisforme.com/uk/styles/harvard-referencing-generator/anglia-university

Plagiarism

Plagiarism is using someone else's work in your thesis or dissertation without giving them full acknowledgement. This includes copying text from the internet and passing it off as your own original work.

Universities will check for plagiarism using a software called Turnitin. You will find also that many examiners are good at recognising text that isn't your own, for example when the writing style changes. This includes paraphrasing.

Ultimately, plagiarism is not only unethical, but it is illegal. Don't risk it!

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