Spell-check your thesis. Check for mistakes!
At Persoonlijk Proefschrift, we take care of the formatting of your thesis. This means that we assume all texts will be supplied correctly and will not be amended afterwards. It is therefore advisable to check the texts in your thesis carefully for errors before we begin the design.
This article provides answers to the following questions:
– How can I check my thesis more effectively for textual errors myself?
– Are there any paid services that can help me improve my level?
– Word’s grammar check doesn’t work properly, but what does? Grammarly.
50,000 words without a single mistake?!
All your chapters combined make up a thesis of around 50,000 to sometimes as many as 100,000 words. That’s quite a task, and it can be tricky to spot all the textual errors. The best tip we can give you is to print out your thesis. Printing it out makes it much easier to spot mistakes, as you can focus better on the text. We regularly come across textual corrections that are only noticed once the thesis has been sent to the printer as a proof.
Software / Grammarly
Unfortunately, you can’t always rely on Word either. Word checks individual words but not sentence structure. Fortunately, there is a company that specialises in precisely this: Grammarly. Grammarly is a free online service that focuses on analysing and improving complex English sentences. It’s generally very useful; a browser plugin ensures that your emails, for example, are also checked.
No time to check your thesis for errors?
If you don’t have time to carry out the check yourself, or perhaps you’re not particularly good at it, you can also use paid services. These usually employ experienced (English) copywriters and can save you a lot of hassle. We ourselves work closely with Scribbr. Scribbr specialises in proofreading manuscripts. Scribbr’s editors are academically trained linguists. All editors have undergone a rigorous recruitment process and have been trained at the Scribbr Academy to edit academic texts. For English-language dissertations, they work exclusively with native English speakers. Furthermore, all editors use the Scribbr Improvement Model, which has been specially developed for academic texts.
