Tag: dissertation and thesis

Proofreading Theses and Dissertations: The Guide and the Online Training

Written by Alison Chand

Background

When I started out in proofreading and copy-editing in 2012, towards the tail end of my PhD, my work mainly involved some casual proof-editing of other postgraduates’ work mostly in the form of dissertations and PhD theses, to make a bit of extra cash. After the birth of my daughter later that year, I began to take editing more seriously and, on the most part, this was still the kind of work I pursued. I did some training courses in editing, starting with Chapterhouse’s distance learning course in proofreading and copy-editing and followed by the SfEP’s (now CIEP) introductory day courses on the same subjects. I’ve picked up new training most years, including the SfEP’s follow-up Proofreading Progress, Copy-editing Headway and Copy-editing Progress courses. Throughout this time, my main area of work has remained student theses and dissertations.

I worked (and continue to work) independently on student theses with students contacting me through my lecturing work at the University of Strathclyde and the University of the Highlands and Islands. Although I am now also approached via the CIEP directory and Glasgow Editors Network. In 2012, I also became a freelance proofreader and copy-editor for ProofreadMyEssay (now rebranded as Proofed) and continue to undertake work for this company. As a result of my background in lecturing and university-level teaching, I was aware of some of the ethical issues involved in editing for students. Over the last six years I have gradually honed my craft, becoming more accomplished in tasks such as using tracked changes, working with references and formatting.

CIEP Membership

I entered the CIEP (at that point as an Associate of SfEP) in 2012, moving to Intermediate member, and early in 2019 upgraded to Professional membership status, a process which took up quite a bit of time. After taking a bit of a break from gathering evidence of my training, and not wanting to rest on my laurels, my thoughts turned to what training I should do next. It occurred to me that I had never actually undertaken any official training in the kind of editing I do the most – proofreading and copy-editing theses and dissertations.

Preparing for the Course

Before embarking on the Proofreading Theses and Dissertations online course, I got hold of a copy of the CIEP’s guide on the topic, which introduces the issues involved in working with students. These include specific requirements for calculating fees and working on samples, as well as ethical considerations associated with, for example, plagiarism and fact-checking. The basic principles of proofreading theses and dissertations discussed in the guide served as a useful introduction to the requirements and techniques involved in editing for students, while rightly pointing to the need for more in-depth consideration of some of the issues raised. With the intention of ascertaining whether my work practice fitted with ciep recommendations and looking for pointers for improvement, I decided to embark on the online course.

Proofreading Theses and Dissertations – online course

The Proofreading Theses and Dissertations course is divided into six sections and has ten exercises to complete, with corresponding examples and model answers where relevant. The sections entitled ‘First contact’ and ‘Negotiation’ give much useful insight into how to correspond with students and negotiating a fee. For me, the examples given of work agreement forms in these sections were particularly useful – while I normally agreed terms with students by email, undertaking the course prompted me to develop a work agreement form of my own. I now stipulate the work I will and will not be able to undertake for students which adds another layer of professionalism and transparency to my work. I have since found that using the form and sending it to students helps me clarify with them some of the ethical issues involved in editing their work, such as plagiarism and the necessity for dissertations to represent their own original work. These issues are raised in the fourth section of the online course.

The fifth section covers different formats which was useful in its explanations of working with LaTeX files. While I am comfortable working in Word and, to a lesser extent, with PDF documents, I have steadfastly avoided LaTeX files, but, if I decide to take the plunge in future, I’ll have my notes from this course to guide me! I found the final section, entitled ‘Pulling it all together’, a very effective way of drawing together all the information and guidance presented in the course.

Reflections

Overall, then, I think that the online Proofreading Theses and Dissertations course offers a highly useful introduction to this kind of editing work for those new to it, but also has useful insights for proofreaders and editors who have, like me, worked on theses and dissertations before, and are looking for ways to improve their methods of working. Studying it was certainly a good use of my time!

Copy-editing Headway – a course review

Written by Alison Chand

In an attempt to track the useful elements of training courses I undertake, and areas with the potential to be more helpful, here’s a brief summary of my experiences completing CE2, or Copy-editing Headway.

Training completed before CE2

I came to editing as someone who fancied myself as pretty good with spelling and grammar. I quickly realised, on dipping my toe into Chapterhouse’s distance learning course in proofreading and copy-editing, that a successful career in the field would involve a bit more than this!

I completed this course in early 2012, but still felt I had many, many things to learn about becoming a freelance proofreader and copy-editor. I resolved to dedicate time each year to CPD and training courses. 2013 saw me undertake the SfEP’s introductory day courses on proofreading and copy-editing, and in 2014 I tackled Proofreading Progress, before it was split into two courses. My training plans went a bit off course in 2015 and 2016 with the birth of Euan, my second child, but in 2017 I determined to get back on track. So, I signed up for CE2, Copy-editing Headway.

With my previous lack of experience of using proofreading and editing symbols, I’d already found Proofreading Progress challenging and quite a big step up from the introductory day course on proofreading, so I was encouraged by the fact that CE2 promised to be a midway step between the Introduction to Copy-editing and CE3, Copy-editing Progress, particularly as my completion of the introductory course was now three years in the past. I signed up for CE2 in February this year, and was promptly assigned a tutor – Jane Moody, the SfEP’s Director for Professional Development.

Keen to get started, I embarked on the course …

Are you ready?

The opening section, entitled, ‘Are you ready?’, was, for me, the only one that I felt could do with fleshing out. It claimed to be a reminder of what copy-editors do, but the blurb at the opening indicated that CE1 should have furnished me with a knowledge of copy-editing already and the brief notes gave little practical information about how material should be laid out.

My feedback from Jane Moody on my first assignment was extremely detailed and helpful, and very useful in steering me in the correct approaches to take in several areas. I did feel, however, that an example exercise might have been a more useful way to start. The current set-up made me feel a bit of a failure for not remembering much of the course I had done three years previously, but a few quick reminders in Jane Moody’s feedback were sufficient to help me out.

I also felt that the notes provided for this section could have provided a few practical summary points, with an example exercise providing a reminder of how to lay out material. This could easily be done without going over all of CE1, but would take account of the fact that different time periods have passed since participants in CE2 have completed CE1.

The rest of the course

The remainder of the course is divided into four further sections on coding and displaying material; editorial style; bibliographies; and images, photographs and figures. The course notes for these sections were much more useful than those from the first section, and a lot of the material from section 2 on coding and display might usefully have been incorporated into the first section.

Some of the material here served as a reminder of what I knew already, and some was new, but everything was well laid out and useful, and a clear model answer was given for the first practice exercise, allowing me to compare my own work with how it should have been laid out. I think model answers are great for learning and the practice exercises in CE2 made good use of these.

Section 3, on editorial style and what should be included in a style sheet, provided a very helpful example style sheet and I was able to make tweaks to my existing style sheet template for proof-editing purposes. Furnished with the advice provided in sections 2 and 3, I felt much more confident in tackling the second assignment for marking and duly performed much better in it.

Overall, the course offered a good balance between editing on screen and on hard copy. However, while it was useful to do this second assignment on hard copy, I would have found it helpful to do an additional assignment on screen as well as the first one (which I didn’t feel adequately prepared to do justice), before embarking on the final assignment. I should point out that, for the second assignment, as for the others, I received detailed and thorough feedback from Jane Moody, very promptly after I had sent the work.

The information about copy-editing bibliographies in section 4 also incorporated a useful practice exercise. I’ve worked quite a bit with bibliographies for academic authors, so probably felt more comfortable with this material. Much of the material in section 5, though, on images, photographs and figures, was new to me.

As section 5 culminated with completion of the final assignment, it would’ve been useful to see practical examples of how completed work should be laid out in advance of doing the assignment. The course notes were detailed and useful, but stated an assumption that those completing the course would know how to cue images into edited work from CE1. As with the first section, I found this problematic as I had completed CE1 some three years previously. Without going over this material again in great detail, a quick summary of how to do this, perhaps as part of a practical example, would not have gone amiss.

Overall thoughts …

Overall, my experience of completing and, happily, passing CE2 was a positive one. The feedback from my tutor was prompt, helpful and constructive; and, while it might have been useful for the course to have involved fewer assumptions about knowledge from CE1 and to have included more practical examples of material layout, I was still pleased by the level of detail in the course notes and by the organisation of the course.