Dissertations
Student proofreading at a great 25% discount
Helping students to express themselves clearly
Student proofreading
Who is covered?
I provide student proofreading at a great 25% discount, supported by a wealth of valuable experience in professionally handling essays, dissertations, theses, and personal documents for both native British and international students studying in the UK. I have carried out proofreading for mainly foreign students (such as Chinese and Middle Eastern) at the following UK universities, among others:
Birmingham | Chester | Durham | Glasgow | Greenwich | Newcastle | Nottingham | Southampton | Wolverhampton
What will I do?
My meticulous student proofreading is at a great 25% discount off of my usual commercial rate. There will be no compromise on quality while I work to eliminate spelling and punctuation errors, confused wording, and slang. See below for more details.
Specialist subject areas
- business and finance
- cultural studies
- economics
- education
- history
- marketing and branding
- real estate
I would consider most other subject areas.
Student proofreading at a great 25% discount
Email me now for a quote. Rates start from £6.50 per thousand words after discount deducted
Contact meMedia I can handle for you
What’s included in student proofreading?
You might be thinking that student proofreading at a great 25% discount means that service quality will be reduced. It will certainly not, as I will pay the same high level of care and attention with your highly valued document that represents a lot of hard work by you.
Academic writing must be your own work and if your first language is not English or if you have difficulty expressing yourself in writing, most universities and colleges allow you to have your text checked by an English-speaking proofreader. This helps to ensure your meaning is clear and that the text is written in acceptable English.
Please ensure you are aware of your university’s proofreading rules and that you have your supervisor’s permission to use a professional proofreader. Some universities do not allow third-party proofreading or have very strict rules concerning it.
How will I check and correct your writing?
When I offer student proofreading at a discount I will carefully and thoroughly proofread your document word by word. All corrections are marked up using MS Word’s ‘Track Changes’ function, which highlights in the text and the margin where words have been deleted, replaced or moved. Comments, queries, and recommendations as to better wording are also added. See below for more specific checks.
Style guides used
check for correct and consistent spelling; UK and US English handled
Punctuation
check punctuation, grammar, and consistency of capitalization
Word usage
correct or highlight incorrect word usage, such as “their” for “there”
Raise queries
raise queries or make suggestions on sentences that do not make sense, for instance if they cannot be eliminated by minor changes to punctuation or wording by me, and identify any overly complex ones
References
check text references to citations in the references or bibliography sections and their formatting (but not their accuracy or validity), and identify missing or duplicated reference numbers
Repetition
highlight repetition, inconsistencies, evident omissions, and over-long sentences or paragraphs. I can suggest solutions where possible
Inconsistencies
point out inconsistencies of layout and heading styles / hierarchy
Formatting
undertake basic formatting such as deleting double spaces between words or sentences or correct inconsistent use of single and double quotation marks.
What’s not included in student proofreading?
Proofreading services include checks on language, spelling, punctuation, grammar, and presentation aspects only. I am usually not allowed to:
Improve visual
carry out major reformatting to improve visual appearance
Rewrites
write or rewrite material, or reduce word count
Table of contents
create a table of contents or a reference list
Diagrams
redraw diagrams, charts, and figures and add labels to them
Equations
check equations or calculations, figures, diagrams, or tables
Check facts
check or correct facts
Check content
check that the content of your document meets your university’s guidelines
Accuracy
assess the accuracy or completeness of arguments or reasoning
Plagiarism
check for plagiarism.
What you can do if you exceed the word count – 10 strategies
- Cut out waffly phrases, for example: ‘at the end of the day’ – use ‘ultimately’. Also eliminate phrases like ‘from the point of view of’.
- Write shorter sentences, say of 15 to 20 words maximum. You then won’t need joining words/conjunctions such as ‘and’ and ‘however’.
- Reduce the use of adjectives and adverbs.
- Reduce the overuse of the words ‘that’ and ‘the’.
- Abbreviate often-repeated names of organisations to acronyms after the first instance. The same goes for often-repeated terms and phrases.
- Use plain English. For instance, try The Oxford Guide to Plain English by Martin Cutts.
- Look out for general wordiness and bloat, such as ‘It has been reported that …’ as in, for example, ‘It has been reported that samples were collected by researchers’, which could be trimmed to ‘researchers collected samples’. This can be achieved by using the active voice rather than the passive voice.
- Check with your university whether the word count should include the References section and Appendices (it does vary).
- Consider whether some text could be moved to the Appendices if appendices are not included in the word count.
- Reduce unnecessary endnotes/footnotes and references to other works while being careful to acknowledge words you have quoted from published authors. Don’t reference for the sake of it.
Student proofreading checklist
Discover how my checklist can help you prepare
Find out moreFree download
See below to download and save or print a summary of student proofreading services with added tips for preparing for proofreading
AI warning
You might be tempted to use an AI language tool to write your essay, dissertation, or thesis, thinking you can avoid the cost of proofreading as they could not possibly make a mistake. However, please be aware that these AI tools have been found to make errors and in some cases invent information or could commit plagiarism. ChatGPT was recently discovered to have included fictitious reference citations! Here is another instance. Can you really afford to take that risk with your future? See further details of known flaws on my Rewriting & text refining page.
Make your writing stand out!
Let me fine-tune it by rewriting to give it a human and personal touch.