Editing For Dissertations: What to Expect

In my experience, there are two kinds of PhD student: the students who actively pursue editing for their dissertations and papers, either on their own or prompted by a supervisor or journal editor; and the students who had no idea editors were available. (I was in the latter camp for most of grad school!)

In this post I’ll try to answer some FAQs about dissertation editing, and hopefully give you a better idea of what to expect and how a dissertation edit might be helpful.

Is hiring an editor allowed?

Okay, so obviously this depends on your institution and your department; but generally speaking, yes, it is okay for doctoral students to use professional editors.

Dissertation editing is a specific and special form of editing because it is extremely important that the editor not impose their own thoughts on the work. This is good practice in general, but even more so in the case of student work. An editor is helping with the writing, not the content. As a student, you’re developing yourself as a researcher and as a scholar. A good dissertation editor is very conscious of the lines between helping a student express themselves as clearly as possible and interfering with a students’ education. I always like to ask for any departmental or university guidelines about using professional editing (many universities have them!), to make sure my student clients’ degree is helped, not hurt. But since we are working on improving your writing, not your research, using a professional editor is usually fine, if not encouraged.

How can an editor help?

1. Library formatting
   The most common request I get from students is for help formatting their dissertations for library submission. Libraries can be very, very picky about their submission requirements, and I have heard many stories about dissertations being rejected by the library for small formatting errors, and needing to be revised. (Formatting my dissertation was one of my favorite parts of the process, which I suppose means I’m in the right line of work…)
   
2. Proofreading
   Another common request I get is for proofreading. Most students do much of their own copy editing, but want another pair of eyes to look over their work and catch any final mistakes. It’s almost impossible for the author to catch every single typo or error in a 60-90k (or more) word document! You’ve simply spent too much time looking at it and thinking about it. I can also fix things like inconsistent hyphenation or spelling (more of us use a mix of British and American spellings than we think!).
   
3. References
   Something else it can be very helpful to have outside help on. Citation managers like Zotero, etc. are super helpful, but it is necessary to go over them before a thesis or paper is turned in. This is another task that a lot of students either hate doing, are too overwhelmed to do themselves, or simply want some extra support for.
   
4. Multilingual writers
   There are so many of you brave souls writing dissertations in English! This is something I love to help with. If your first language isn’t English, a copy editor can be very useful in helping you polish the language of the dissertation and express your research as clearly as possible. I work with many ESL (English as a second language) writers, and love doing this work!
   
5. Structure and organization
   Not all students want support in copy editing, which is essentially what numbers 1-4 entail. I also do developmental editing for students, which again focuses only on the structure and clarity of your dissertation; not the content. You’re still doing the heavy lifting here, but what I can do is take a birds’ eye look at your dissertation and note where there might be gaps in logic. Most of the time, what happens is that because you’ve done all the research, you don’t realize what someone not in your head might need to understand the complex points you’re trying to make. My job is to look for and point out where an idea might need to be fleshed out, a term defined, or whether ideas need to be connected more explicitly.
   
   In some ways, you could think of this as like if you had an advisor that only focused on your writing; your academic advisor guides you through the norms of your discipline, teaches you how to conduct your own research, and gives you area-specific advice. My job is to help you with your academic writing so that all of the knowledge your advisor imparts upon you is expressed as clearly as possible.
   
   Usually this kind of help is rolled into a developmental edit, although I do also offer writing consults that are quick and much less expensive (and less intimidating, hopefully)!

How much does editing cost?

My student pricing can be found on my Services page, and I also offer fee-free payment plans. Some universities and departments also have funds for editing; sometimes these can sometimes be listed as professional development funds, since writing help is professional development for academics! I would always check with your department administrator and your school or division to see if something like this is available.

As I noted above I also offer 30 minute writing help and verbal feedback sessions for folks who don’t want a full edit for whatever reason! These can be super helpful and they’re much more low stakes. More details are listed on my Services page, and you are more than welcome to message me anytime if you have questions about those.

In summary

If you’re thinking about getting editing on any of your doctoral documents, congratulations! That means you are so close, and that you’ve done most of the work already. You’re almost there, and I hope you’re so proud of yourself. I would be honored to support you if I can.