Reviewing and proofreading

Devoting time to drafting, correcting, improving and redrafting your thesis will improve it. However, you should guard against endlessly revising the same section. It may be helpful to think of the process as the production of a series of drafts. After producing each draft, review it, gradually focusing in on the detail. Also ask other people to read it as this will give a valuable outside perspective. There are three major drafts that you should consider, although there may be many intermediate drafts within each stage.

Draft one: editing for consistency

After assembling all of your writing into something that looks approximately like a thesis, map out what you have done section by section (essentially creating a plan in reverse).

Then ask yourself the following questions:

• what is my main thesis or argument?
• does the title of the thesis match with what I have actually written?
• is there anything missing, in the wrong place or that shouldn't be there?
• are important points emphasised enough?
• is the content within each section appropriate?
• have I linked all the sections?
• does the thesis follow a logical sequence?
• Do the conclusions relate to the objectives?

When you have answered these questions you should have an idea about what major conceptual and structural amendments you need to make.

Draft two: editing for style and content

Once you have dealt with the big structural issues you should edit this draft to improve the way that it reads. Try reading key sections out loud. This may help you notice errors and poorly expressed passages. Ask yourself the following questions:

• does it say what I mean? Could a reader interpret the meaning in different ways?
• can anything be removed or rephrased more concisely? Can long sentences be broken down into shorter ones?
• does the evidence I present justify the analysis and conclusions drawn from it?
• have I presented my data correctly and used appropriate chart types?
• are all of my information sources acknowledged?

Redraft your thesis accordingly.

Draft three: editing for accuracy

Once you have got a thesis that you are ready to submit, undertake a full proofread. Try working through the following stages:

• use a spell checker but don't rely on it - ‘there' and ‘their' are both spelt correctly!
• check your institution's conventions and regulations
• make a list of common errors that you make in spelling, punctuation, etc.
• read through line by line paying particular attention to the regulations and to your common errors
• check internal numbering and referencing, e.g. chapter numbers, labelling and numbering of figures
• check that references in text and in the reference list agree and conform to discipline standards
• look at your work and consider whether it is clear and easy to read
• spell check again.