Just like the dissertation is the last part of your academic journey, in the same way, dissertation editing is the final stage of this tough phase. Indeed, finishing your first writing draft is a milestone in itself but making those ideas clear by reworking them is the real work. This process isn’t just about fixing errors; rather it also makes your work more balanced, coherent, and polished to perfection.
Even the most brilliant minds also need to edit their dissertations perfectly with a keen eye. This topic was even more highlighted when Claudine Gay, a former Harvard president had to resign from her position due to the allegations of plagiarism due to errors in her 1997 dissertation.
This incident is not only enough to open up your eyes but also to emphasise the importance of dissertation editing which students often neglect. Errored dissertations are such a crime that makes you lose your throne. So, to avoid such a drastic situation, you need to pay attention to the dissertation editing and proofreading.
In this article, we will cover everything from the basics to the professional guide to dissertation editing. We will also share some insider tips and tricks to assist students excellently going through this dissertation and thesis editing phase.
What is Dissertation Editing?
According to the University of Otago, editing is all about correcting content writing, coherence, language, formatting and organisation mistakes. Students need to do it themselves but they can also get assistance from the academic supervisors and various writing and editing companies.
Reviewing written work to enhance clarity, grammar, spelling, and punctuation is what we call dissertation editing.
Why Dissertation Editing is Crucial Before Submission?
You can understand the importance of editing your dissertation from the above incident where a Harvard president had to lose his seat for a minor mistake in her work. It shows that dissertation editing is a must-have part of your academics that guarantees the excellence of your work. For this reason, even the most skilled scholars think about hiring a professional dissertation editor.
Besides this, the following are some points to show you the importance of editing a dissertation well:
- Spending time editing your work helps to remove all the possible mistakes like grammar, spelling, punctuation and many others.
- It helps to give a professional look to your written dissertation by overcoming all the structure and coherency errors.
- It gives more clarity to your arguments and helps the reader understand what you are talking about.
- Dissertation editing ensures that your work is up to the standards by maintaining your focus on the institution’s formatting guidelines.
- By checking and revising your work, again and again, you will be able to properly maintain all the citations which ultimately leads to plagiarism-free dissertations.
- A well-edited dissertation boosts your confidence level and you will be prouder of your work.
Why Did Harvard President Quit?
The Guardian reported that Harvard’s President resigned from her position due to the allegations of unwanted plagiarism in her work. Those mistakes were in her dissertation’s citation and she already had submitted the corrections of her published work at that time. She faced immense backlash and pressure from Harvard donors and society resulting in her resignation to save the situation.
This news was published by Gay on January 2, 2024, where she said:
“It is with a heavy heart but a deep love for Harvard that I write to share that I will be stepping down as president.”
All of these factors were the main focus of the university’s board. Such questions about her academic integrity became a cause of the real issue in the university that gave her the name of a black president. A lot of campaigns started against her that ultimately made her decide to leave this precious seat.
How Do You Edit a Dissertation? A Complete Step-by-Step Guide
Wondering how to edit a dissertation well? We understand your situation that right after completing your writing, it’s very tough to navigate through editing challenges. But with this comprehensive guide, you will be able to streamline a path for your dissertation editing. So, follow the steps given below to perfectly edit your dissertation:
1. Review the Structure of Your Dissertation
As we all know, the dissertation has a proper format and structure that you must follow throughout this stage. During editing, first of all, you should check out the general structure to see whether all these chapters are according to the provided instructions or not.
Keep in mind that each chapter has its own values and content so, make sure that everything is on point. You should also make sure that your claims are backed by data and that they give logical reasoning. If something is not in its position, you should put it in the logical order during dissertation editing starting from the title page and ending at the appendices.
2. Use Appendices for Additional Information
Most of the time, there is a lot of additional information related to your topic that you cannot discuss in the dissertation as it may disturb the flow. So, in this case, make use of appendices that store all the data outside the body of the dissertation.
Such appendices provide readers with a deeper understanding of specific points without cluttering the main text.
When crafting your dissertation, always keep in mind to create an appendix for extra details, ensuring clarity and precision in addressing your research questions. This step helps you during the process of dissertation editing itself.
3. Avoid Repetition to Streamline Your Writing
Avoid redundancy in your dissertation by identifying and eliminating repetitive sentences or points. For this purpose, you should consistently review your writing for duplicated content across different sections.
Organise your ideas systematically, using proper order and numbering to maintain coherence. Additionally, vary your vocabulary to prevent repeating similar words and engage readers’ interest.
4. Strictly Follow Your Institute’s Formatting Guidelines
During the dissertation editing process, you should make sure that your dissertation adheres to formatting guidelines provided by your advisor or institution. Here, you should pay attention to text alignment, font usage, spacing, and formatting of headings.
Furthermore, follow your specific citation styles accurately for in-text references because it saves you from plagiarism. You can also make use of online citation generators if needed. By aligning with prescribed formats such as APA, MLA, or Chicago, you ensure professionalism and consistency in your dissertation writing.
5. Title and Label Every Element
A dissertation is full of elements like graphs, tables, charts, diagrams and much more that require a proper title to explain the happening in it. So, you should add their clear titles to avoid any confusion and it also helps readers understand the relevance of each element.
You should carefully go through all these measures during dissertation editing to ensure that each point highlights your study, not the mistakes. In the end, mention all of these things in the and mention them appendix sections efficiently.
6. Keep Your Explanations Concise
Explaining something overly is also a huge mistake in your dissertation that makes your reader bored of it. So, you should avoid overwhelming your readers with excessive explanations. While dissertation editing, you should just make sure that your points are clear and concise, without unnecessary elaboration. Experts suggest discussing only essential details here and giving a logical flow to each point.
In addition, you should also simplify your language and avoid using complex words or lengthy descriptions. You should mainly focus on delivering your points in a straightforward manner that is also easily understandable for all the readers.
7. Clarify Your Ideas for Others
Just like you have a very clear idea of your arguments or research questions, in the same way, you should also make it clear for the readers. So, for that, you need to make some extra effort during dissertation editing to clarify your arguments. You should also make sure that every paragraph has a distinct topic sentence, and supporting details, and is succinct as well. Try to eliminate any extraneous technical terms or ambiguous wording that could perplex your audience.
8. Check Spelling and Grammar
Prioritise checking for spelling and grammar errors during the editing process. These mistakes can detract from the professionalism of your dissertation and may impact your credibility as a researcher.
Here, you can also use online spell-check editors or software to identify and correct any errors in your writing. Make all the necessary revisions to improve readability and ensure that your dissertation is polished and error-free before submission.
9. Request for an Honest Feedback
Dissertation editing is not a task of a single person, you need to communicate with some trustworthy people to get their feedback on your work too. Who can be better than your own supervisor, committee members, or peers for their opinions in this regard? They often provide insightful analysis and helpful recommendations for enhancing your dissertation. However, you should react positively to criticism in order to improve your work.
In addition, there is another reliable option to avail of dissertation editing services from a credible writing platform. Yes, such companies have expert writers and editors who can make your dissertation beyond perfection with their skills. So, you can also trust them for dissertation proofreading and editing assistance.
10. Be Responsible to Produce the Final Version
While your supervisor may offer feedback on multiple drafts, ultimately, it’s your responsibility to produce the final version with excellence. You can only do this by giving yourself enough space and time for proper dissertation editing and proofreading.
For your easiness, you can get help from various editing tools but don’t rely on them completely. This meticulous approach ensures that your dissertation is error-free and ready for submission.
Top 8 Tips for Dissertation Editing from Professionals
No doubt, a dissertation is the name of a hard-working journey where you have to stick hours and hours in front of the laptop. It involves various steps that often start with research and end with editing. While writing your dissertation, you often make mistakes like not maintaining a proper flow, as well as grammar, formatting, and structuring mistakes. You can resolve all of these errors by properly editing your dissertation with some expert suggestions.
So, if you have already completed your dissertation writing and now moving towards the journey of dissertation editing and proofreading, these tips would be a great help for you.
Take a Fresh Start
Of course, after completing a long process of dissertation writing, your mind is tired and not ready to do any further work. So, taking a short break and giving yourself enough time to relax is crucial before starting the editing process. This will help you approach your work with fresh eyes and a clearer perspective.
Focus on One Thing at a Time
Instead of trying to tackle everything at once, you should divide the whole dissertation editing process into small, doable steps. For that, you should mainly focus on specific aspects of editing in each editing session. It mostly includes checking grammar and punctuation errors in one go and other clarifying and coherence mistakes in the other.
Read Backwards
Sometimes, your mind is already stuffed with the content you are editing, so you may not be able to point out a lot of mistakes. Another option in this situation is reading your dissertation backwards, starting from the last sentence and working your way to the beginning. This helps you focus on individual words and prevents your brain from filling in missing words or skipping over errors.
Refine Your Style
Your style of writing may be like a blog or an article so you need to refine it before submission. A great benefit of dissertation editing is that it helps to ensure that your written work is already in the academic tone and style. It also helps you to strike a balance between clarity and complexity. In addition, you should avoid difficult and rough language, vague phrases, convoluted sentences, and excessive repetition.
Trim Excess Words
During dissertation editing, you may find the need to trim down your dissertation by cutting out unnecessary words or sections. While it may be crucial in some places, you should avoid simply removing all the lines or passages that you wrote with so much hard work. Instead, you should take this opportunity to refine your work into a more concise and impactful piece.
Read Aloud
Reading your dissertation aloud can help you identify awkward phrasing, repetitive sentences, and grammatical errors. Sometimes, your eyes cannot see the things that your hearing can point out. So, hearing your writing out loud can also help you in the dissertation editing to maintain the flow and coherence of your arguments.
Take Notes
As you edit your dissertation, make note of any areas that need further revision or clarification. In this way, you can easily pinpoint areas for improvement that you can do later on in the next revision phase. Keep track of common errors or recurring issues that you can address systematically.
Use Editing Tools and Services
Experts also suggest taking advantage of editing tools and professional services such as spelling and grammar checkers but don’t rely on them entirely. These tools can help catch obvious errors, but they may miss more subtle issues that require human judgment. So, getting professional help with dissertation editing is also a good way to polish your work. You should never underestimate the abilities of an expert human mind who can do wonders in dissertation editing.
Conclusion
After completing your dissertation writing, a new journey toward dissertation editing begins. Students neglecting this crucial phase can get an example from the life of Gay; the former president of Harvard. She resigned after her dissertation mistakes came to light even after so many years. So, if you are also going through a similar journey, pay attention to this editing phase as much as you can.
We are aware of the difficulties that students face during these editing phases. So, we have simplified everything with our expert editors’ suggestions for your easiness. By following the above-mentioned guide along with tried tips, you will be on your way to getting a successful dissertation.
0 Comments