I’ve found that the set of standard inclusions below suits most students, but your needs may be different. You might be happy with your current thesis layout and only want me to quote on copyediting. Or, if you haven’t used software like EndNote consistently, you might want to add the optional extra service of correcting format errors in citations and references (in this case, you should include your reference list in your word count). I will give you my professional advice about what I think is required, based on a review of your document, but of course the choice is yours.
That said, my work editing a thesis generally includes:
- Formatting the whole document according to any supplied guideline, or following standard academic practice;
- Configuring the document for either single-sided or double-sided printing, with appropriate margin settings and new sections always starting on the right;
- Automatically generating Table of Contents and Lists of Tables/Figures, ordering the front matter sections, and using Roman numerals for its pages and Arabic numerals subsequently;
- Removing any blank lines and page breaks you have manually inserted, as these make correct pagination difficult to maintain;
- Creating and applying styles to implement a hierarchy of headings and ensure consistency in spacing between elements;
- Replacing captions entered as plain text with Insert Caption ones that will number automatically and appear in the Lists of Tables/Figures;
- Eliminating spelling, grammar, syntax, word choice and punctuation errors;
- Advising on rewriting required to improve clarity and economy of expression;
- Ensuring correctness and consistency of spelling (either Australian/UK or US), abbreviation, hyphenation, capitalisation, italicisation and representation of numbers;
- Using Track Changes for all corrections and comments;
- Doing a final check of the document, after you have processed my suggested changes and comments, to fix any remaining formatting or pagination issues and to regenerate the Table of Contents and Lists of Tables/Figures.
Optional Extras (If you request these items, they will be billed at my standard hourly rate according to the actual time taken)
- Copyediting chapters one by one;
- Combining separate chapters into one Word document;
- Checking citations and references for conformity with your chosen referencing style, and fixing format errors or flagging missing information;
- Cross-checking citations against the reference list, and flagging missing entries;
- Cross-checking abbreviations against the List of Abbreviations, and flagging missing entries;
- Adding automatically updated links within the document where reference is made to certain sections, figures, tables or appendices;
- Partially formatting your thesis, or troubleshooting a specific formatting problem;
- Proofreading the final version of a thesis previously formatted and edited.
Please Note:
- It would not be appropriate or ethical for me to alter the content of work being presented for examination; therefore, I do not do substantive editing, i.e. assessing and shaping material to improve its organisation, content and suitability for purpose.
- You should acknowledge that your thesis has been professionally edited by including in your front matter a statement similar to the following: “I thank Dr Janene Carey for editorial assistance with this thesis, which took the form of formatting / copyediting / proofreading, as specified in Standards D and E of the Australian Standards for Editing Practice.”
- If the word count of the thesis you submit for editing is more than ten per cent higher than the word count you supplied when requesting a quotation, I may request an additional payment.
- If you wish to have your reference list and/or appendices copyedited, these pages should be included in the overall thesis word count and you should specify this as an optional extra. Generally, these sections do not require professional editing.
- I will tidy tables but I don’t check any calculations they may contain. I also don’t edit images, graphs or other non-text objects. To avoid figures being disrupted by changes to the document, you should make each one a single entity and set it inline with text.
- Although I like to do a quick check of the formatted and copyedited document after you have processed my suggested corrections and comments, I don’t re-read it all. I will happily make minor changes to suit your preferences, but my quoted price, which you pay upfront, is based on the time I estimate will be required to format and copyedit your thesis once. If you substantially rewrite sections, or add entirely new sections, after I have copyedited the document, I recommend that you ask me to do a final proofread to catch any new errors you may have introduced.
Please make your initial contact via this form:
Janene Carey 