Proofreading Theses and Dissertations

1| Introduction

The purpose of this guide

Why produce a guide specifically for proofreading or editing theses and dissertations? There are two reasons.

It is likely that your client – the student who has written the thesis or dissertation – will not have worked with a professional editor before. They will not know what information you need, how you work out your fee, what work you can do and what you cannot do, and your way of working. You will need to build a relationship with the student and at the same time introduce them to the world of professional editing. This is different from the situation when you are working with a professional author or publisher.

The thesis or dissertation has to be the student’s own work. This means that you cannot alter the content, unless you judge it is a simple typographical error that needs correcting. And unless you have specific permission from the student’s supervisor, you cannot substantially alter the wording. Again, this is significantly different from the situation where you are working on material for a book or journal article.

Both of these factors are discussed in this guide, but first some preliminary questions will be addressed:

What are theses and dissertations?

Do we proofread or edit a thesis or dissertation?

What are the advantages and disadvantages of working on theses and dissertations?

How do we get to work on a thesis or a dissertation?

Definitions

According to OED online, and conflating a couple of definitions, a ‘thesis’ is defined as:

A dissertation to maintain and prove a thesis (in the sense of a proposition laid down or stated, esp. as a theme to be discussed and proved, or to be maintained against attack); esp. one written or delivered by a candidate for a University degree.

whereas ‘dissertation’ is defined as:

An extended scholarly essay, usually based upon original research, submitted for a degree or other academic qualification.

These definitions don’t make any specific distinction between a thesis and a dissertation. In fact, a thesis is described as a dissertation.

Nevertheless, in the UK a ‘thesis’ has come to mean a piece of original work written up for a PhD, and ‘dissertation’ has come to mean the same thing, only for work written up for Masters and other degrees below PhD level. Confusingly, in the US it is the other way around.

Throughout this guide ‘thesis’ is used to mean either a thesis or dissertation.

Proofreading or editing?

In a perfect world, a thesis will be presented to you in reasonable English, needing only a proofread – that is, correcting only for errors in spelling, grammar and punctuation, and pointing out inconsistencies and the odd awkward phrase or sentence. However, theses frequently need a lot more work than