It is impossible to overstate the importance of editing thesis or articles. Editors and thesis examiners are less tolerant of writings that contain errors when submitted for degree completion or publishing. A tidy, well-proofed thesis demonstrates respect for the reader as well as the importance put on the work. Such accomplishments are exhausting, and few people desire to edit their work once it is finished.
Many budding researchers, whether motivated by time restrictions or a fear of failure, resort to their friends who may be busy for a thorough exercise or to proofreading service firms depending on how much cash they have. Through the remarkable path of two PhDs, other academic degrees, and even publishing, I have learnt that we all need to have our work read by someone else to ensure that our language is plain, easy to grasp, and that any faults are minor. As a result, I work with a pool of proofreaders who are familiar with academic writing traditions, policy concerns, and style project designers who assist with the creation of PowerPoint and poster presentations. These expert proofreaders are familiar with the thesis author’s discipline. They have a superb command of English, French and Swahili. As such in editing and proof-reading, we task ourselves with:
- Checking the content line by line, fixing any spelling, punctuation, or grammatical errors.
- Correcting punctuation problems found in numerals, years, and references.
- Correcting grammatical problems including subject-verb disagreements and dangling participles.
- Highlighting bad word choices, clarifying the issue, and suggesting alternate alternatives.
- Getting rid of redundancies and inconsistencies.
- Issues such as abstract length, running heads, consistent headers, captions, and graphics are proofread and rectified.
- Headings are compared to the table of contents.
- Department-specific formatting is proper, including fonts, margins, and pagination.
- All citations (in-text, footnotes, endnotes, and bibliography) are proofread and corrected.
- Broken and ghost URLs have been corrected.
