Proofreading

“To err in writing is human; to proofread is correcting those errors”

Do you want to get your research content—thesis, dissertation, paper, questionnaire, research proposal—proofread?

If “yes” then I will be happy to assist you!

First, Proofread Yourself!

You can proofread the content yourself by following these steps:

  1. Run spell check in your MS Word as a preliminary step.
  2. Check your content on Grammarly. It is a good tool for correcting grammatical, punctuation, and other similar kind of mistakes. 
  3. If you are writing in APA Style, then don’t completely rely on Grammarly as it doesn’t recognize all the intricacies of APA Style. This, you have to check yourself by comparing your content with the notes provided in the course.
  4. Still, if you need my assistance, then drop a message in contact specifying the details of your content (i.e., paper/thesis/questionnaire and words approximately). I will be happy to help if not preoccupied with the assignments.

You can check the formatting yourself by following these steps:

  1. Use the same font throughout the research content such as

    • Sans serif font such as 11-point Calibri, 11-point Arial, or 10-point Lucida Sans Unicode or
    • Serif font such as 12-point Times New Roman, 11-point Georgia, or normal 10-point Computer Modern

      APA recommends using these fonts as they are legible and include special characters such as math symbols and Greek letters.

      (To know the difference between serif and sans serif fonts click here)

  2. For figures, use a sans serif font sized between 8–14 points.
  3. For writing footnotes in a page footer, use 10-point font with single-line spacing
  4. For margins, use 1-inch (2.54 cm) margin on all sides (left, right, top, and bottom). If you are writing a thesis, dissertation, or research proposal (which are to be bound), then leave 1.5-inch (3.81 cm) left margin.
  5. Use page size as A4 as mainly printouts are taken in this page size.
  6. When starting a new paragraph, indent the first line by 0.5 inch by using the tab key.
  7. As for line spacing, APA says to double-space the entire paper, including the title page, abstract, text, headings, block quotations, reference list, table and figure notes, and appendices, with the following exceptions:
    • The text written in table or figure may be single-spaced, one-and-half-spaced, or double-spaced.
    • The text written in footnotes that appear at the bottom of the page should be single-spaced.

    (There are no specific guidelines by APA regarding spacing in theses, research proposals, etc. In my opinion, you may choose either one-and-half or double-spacing. Avoid single-spacing in content.)

    Kindly note.

    The guidelines regarding formatting issued by the respective journals (in case of papers) and university guidelines (in case of theses, dissertations, or research proposals) will supersede the APA formatting guidelines.

    Reference
    American Psychological Association. (2020). Publication manual of the American Psychological Association (7th ed.). https://doi.org/10.1037/0000165-000

Proofreading Images

Scholar Feedback

I had approached Dr. Sukhmani for data analysis but in the process, eventually, I ended up getting my whole thesis proofread by her. She not only reformatted it entirely but checked each and every line, starting from the introduction to the last reference. I got to learn about APA Style of writing through her comments, something which we weren’t taught in our Pre-PhD classes. Moreover, I also received a word of appreciation from the interviewer during viva. All credit goes to Dr. Sukhmani for streamlining the thesis. I wish her all the luck for her future endeavours, and I hope that the new scholars will find both her course and proofreading service beneficial.

Dr. Anju Sharma, Assistant Professor, CT College of Education, Jalandhar; Ex Research Scholar, Department of Education, Panjab University, Chandigarh.

Dr. Sukhmani Singh’s minute observations and suggestions provided an edge to my PhD thesis. From sentence structure, choice of words, to even pointing out unnecessary spaces between words, Dr. Singh did not leave even a particle unexamined. She put a firm frame of the APA Style around my thesis. I hope other research scholars also get an opportunity to get their prospective theses examined by Dr. Singh. I wish her a great journey ahead in helping to produce good quality PhD theses.

Dr. Satyan Sharma, Assistant Professor (Guest) and Ex Research Scholar, Department of Sanskrit, Panjab University, Chandigarh.

Dr. Sukhmani is an excellent mentor. My PhD thesis had too many flaws, but she corrected them minutely and patiently. Though she looks like an expensive resource, she proves her worth in the end. Her proofreading expertise is value for money.

Dr. (CA) Eish Taneja, Partner in Eish Taneja and Associates; Faculty at LBSIM & ICMA, Delhi; Ex Research Scholar, GD Goenka University, Gurgaon.

I found your comments insightful in terms of improving the quality of my questionnaire. Such a candid and detailed proofreading service is hard to come by. I am beyond satisfied. Thank you!

Sayed Ehsan Saeedi, Research Scholar, Department of Commerce and Management Studies, Farook College, Kozhikode.