You’ve spent a number of years sitting at different tables, in different rooms, continually learning and putting pieces of information together. You’ve spent countless hours studying, making connections, and developing your own thoughts and ideas. The end is right around the corner, and it all lies on the quality of your dissertation or thesis.
This one final project is to be the very best reflection of the culmination of years and contemplation that you’ve put into your line of study. This is the time to put your best work out there, and the best way to do that is to partner up with a web copy editing service before you even begin to write. We’ll take a look at how and why in this post…
What You Should Provide Your Editor
There are two things that you should provide your dissertation editing services company with so they can help you the best that they can:
- A copy of a handbook that outlines your university or college’s dissertation policies and procedures.
- A copy of your university or college’s style and formatting guide, or instructions on which guide they follow (i.e. The Chicago Manual of Style, MLA, APA, Oxford, etc.)
The handbook can include information such as how you should have the final paper bound professionally, how to have it microfilmed, and more. The style and formatting guide will provide all of the minute yet pertinent information that you and the editing service that you hire will need to ensure that your paper meets the school’s guidelines, including:
- The paper’s margin requirements.
- How the final copy of your dissertation should be structured/organized.
- Rules behind the use of headings and subheadings.
- The line spacing of the document.
- Acceptable font styles and sizes.
- The layout of headers and footers.
- Any required preliminary pages.
- Appendices and their layout.
- …and more.
Don’t Get Overwhelmed—A Web Copy Editing Company Can Help You
If you’ve already flipped through your thesis or dissertation style and formatting guide, then that alone has probably left you feeling completely overwhelmed—never mind the vast amount of research, time, and thought that you have or will need to put into your work. This is when someone like a freelance copy editor can step in and help. Once you let go of any additional nitty-gritty details that you may not know how to handle by passing it on to an editing company (i.e. changing margins, how to create a proper reference list, what widows and orphans are acceptable in your paper, etc.), you can focus on what you know best—the subject you’ll be writing on.
Hire an Editing Service ASAP
A lot of students wait until they’ve finished writing their thesis or dissertation before hiring an editing service, but there are a number of benefits that come with hiring an editor before you even get started:
- An editing company will be able to guide you on how you can create the defaults necessary in your word processing software to meet the style and formatting requirements.
- An editor will make sure that the information you provide is accurate and complete by performing any necessary fact checks as you write your paper (this is a huge time saver!).
- Editors will work with students to create a plan that will ensure that a student will have a clean, polished thesis to hand in on the due date.
Do you have a thesis that you’ll be working on? Have you already got one and need some help?