A thesis is like a worldwide membership card to the professionals’ club. It takes a great deal of time and effort to complete your research work. But once it’s done, edited, and defended, your thesis proves to potential employers that you can successfully deal with any complex task. This article gives professional tips on how you can find help editing your thesis.
How can you ensure your committee approves your thesis? Finding an interesting topic and conducting rigorous research is only one part of the answer. Thesis editors know that the secret to a successful defense also lies in how you present your study in writing.
After months of work, you are ready to turn your draft into a completed thesis. This process is called editing, and there are many resources, either free or professional, to help you with this task. You are always your first resource. Read your draft through for the big picture: Did you include everything you wanted to say in your thesis? Are your arguments well developed? Are there concepts or cases that may be unclear to the reader? If necessary, spend a few hours more to clarify your ideas in writing.
Computer spell check can help you in catching typos and basic grammar errors in your thesis. Ask the computer to check for both grammar and style to see if any of the sentences are too long. Add difficult names of new concepts or researchers to your computer dictionary to catch any typos when you use these names later in your thesis. Do not automatically accept all changes recommended by the spell check program: Sometimes computers can be wrong.
Websites offering tips on style and citations can be of great help. Many of them are managed by professional thesis editors who know their stuff.
Check http://owl.english.purdue.edu for the most common reference styles. For more specific questions, go to mla.org, apastyle.org, or chicagomanualofstyle.org, if your thesis needs to follow MLA, APA, or Chicago (Turabian) style. Our blog at firstediting.com also offers lots of valuable tips for editing your thesis. The advantage of these resources is that they are free. On the downside, it may be time-consuming to find exactly what you are looking for.
The best help you can find is the help of a professional thesis editor. Such an editor can read your thesis through with a fresh pair of eyes and let you know if there are any major gaps in your writing. A professional editor can also fix any grammar and spelling mistakes and review your sentence structure, word choice, and flow of your arguments. With professional editing help, your references will follow the style your school requires and your writing will acquire a polished look.
Remember, what stands between your draft thesis and successful completion of your degree is quality editing, and choosing professional help is always the safest bet to having your defense only once.
