When to send a thesis for editing?

Every few weeks a doctoral student emails to ask at what stage their thesis should be sent for editing. The answer is simple: as late as possible, because if you introduce amendments and additions afterwards there is a risk of introducing mistakes as well.

Although the answer is simple, the logic behind it bears examination and comes down to the role of the thesis editor.

Where a doctoral thesis is concerned, the student is demonstrating the ability to prepare, carry out and report a piece of original research according to the conventions in force. The process is guided by a supervisor who gives expert advice. It has something in common with the mediaeval apprentice's masterpiece, produced to prove proficiency in the skills taught by the master craftsman. The thesis has been researched and written up, chapters have been discussed, reshaped, returned and honed. It is only at the very last stage that the editor should become involved.

Why so late? Because the thesis editor's role is, of course, neither to write nor to guide: it is to advise on presentation, not on content, which is why the content needs to be finalised before editing starts.

The editor makes sure that the examiners can read the thesis with their attention focused on the research, without being sidetracked and annoyed by errors of presentation. This final stage therefore addresses the detail: the typing errors, layout problems, grammatical slips, inconsistencies, confused sentences, referencing howlers and other minutiae. Making changes after editing is likely to introduce new errors, an odd fingerprint or two to mar the highly polished surface of the masterpiece.

Although editing the thesis is the last stage, this does not mean the last minute! Any editor worth their salt is likely to have a schedule of jobs booked in, and is unlikely to be waiting to take on your work at a moment's notice. If that sounds heartfelt it is: definitely a sore point and possibly the subject of another post!

References - the last word.

While I am enjoying a brief respite from the reality of checking Lists of References, I shall outline the last stage of my method of presenting them as well as is practicable: ensuring that the entries are in the right order.

"Alphabetical" is, sadly, too obvious an answer! As always, there are subtleties and variations. The APA (American Psychological Association) system, for instance, has rules all of its own. Unless you have specific guidance, however, the following is a good guide:

1. Alphabetical order. Treat all names beginning with Mc, Mac and M' as though they start with Mac.
   
2. Publications by a single author are placed in date order, using a lower case suffix (2008a, 2008b and so on) to distinguish items published in the same year. 2008a should be the one that is referenced first in the text.
3. After these come publications by the same author in conjunction with one co-author, arranged alphabetically by the co-author's name and then by date.
4. Next are publications by the first authors with two or more colleagues, in alphabetical and then chronological order as above. These will of course appear in the text as Author et al., 2008.

So this translates as:

Marvin, P.A. (1978) They Are All Out to Get Me. Ursa Beta Minor: Megadodo.
Marvin, P.A. (2002) The Dummy's Guide to Paranoia. Ursa Beta Minor: Megadodo.
Marvin, P.A. and Beeblebrox, Z. (2008) Shades: the ultimate frontier. Alpha Centauri: Vogon Unlimited.
Marvin, P.A. and Slartibartfast, G. (2003) Award-winning Coastal Design: the significance of glaciation. Magrathea: CamTim Publications.
Marvin, P.A., Prefect, F. and Dent, A. (2005) 999 Uses for a Towel. New York: Vogon Books.

If you think the examples are not only eccentric but inexplicable you have cannot have read The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams, and you are missing out!

Taming references - (almost) the final stage

If a list of references is to pass scrutiny, it has to be consistent. Most publishers, journals and universities in the UK use the Harvard system, but even within that there is a multitude of possible detailed variations.

The classic reference to a whole volume reads on the lines of:

Author, A.B. and Coauthor, C.D. (2008) Title of Book, plus its sub-title. Place of Publication: Publisher.

Apparently foolproof, but what about those variations? Do the authors' initials take full points? Is there a space between the initials? Is there a comma between the authors? Between the initials and the date? After the date? Does the subtitle have capital letters? ... and so on. Unless you are working to a publisher's style guide or a fairly prescriptive course handbook, this sort of fine detail is generally up to you to decide.

The key is to make all the various spaces, punctuation, italics and other details consistent, which sounds simple but is easier said than done. The decisions, of course, do not end with books. Journal articles, chapters in edited volumes, conference papers and Internet references are all expressed differently and all need to be consistent.

A useful method is to compile one perfect sample reference of each type of publication, print it out in large type and stick it to the wall, or keep it by the keyboard, as a reference template as you work your way through the rest of the list.

Reaching Zohar will come as a great relief (well, it always does to me!).

This was supposed to be the last of three stages in the Good Impressions guide to presenting the perfect List of References. But sorry, I was wrong! There still remains the question of the order in which the entries appear. Alphabetical of course but, as you may have guessed, there are some subtleties, which will have to wait until the next post.

Taming references - part two

Once you have made sure that the all the works in your references also appear in the text (see part one), the second stage of the process of correcting the references is checking that the publications referred to in the text are included in the List of References.

This second stage is a slightly trickier process, and needs some concentration. This time you cannot leave all the work to the computer! Bring your text up on screen and work your way through it, stopping each time you come across a textual reference (such as "Bottery 2000") and checking that it is on the list you printed out for the first stage. If it is not, highlight it so you can find it again and track down the publication for inclusion in the list.

The concentration is needed in order to remember accurately what you have checked and what you have not, so that you avoid either checking the same reference 10 times, or assuming you have cross-checked it when you have not. Remembering different publications by the same author can be a challenge; you may have checked Bottery 2000 for example, but not Bottery 1999.

By the time you have gone through the whole text and chased up the missing bibliographical details you will need a cup of tea and a rest to stop your head spinning. You will be sure, though, that the text and List of References agree, and that there is only one more stage to complete before the references are perfect!

Fewer? or less?

A few months ago there was a newspaper story about a major UK supermarket, which decided to change the signs above some of the tills because they had received so many complaints about grammar. The signs read, "10 items or less". The supermarket spokesman admitted no-one could agree whether the signs should say "less" or "fewer", so they simply avoided the issue and put up new signs reading, "about 10 items".

Unless you know the rules, choosing between "less" and "fewer" is hard.

There are many ways of explaining it, but Bill Bryson describes a simple rule of thumb in Bryson's Dictionary for Writers and Editors (Black Swan, 2008: 151): "Use less with singular nouns (less money, less sugar) and fewer with plural nouns (fewer houses, fewer cars)."

So one says "classes with fewer students", but "teachers set less homework".

This is a far easier way to explain the difference than the one I was taught, that "less" is used qualitatively and "fewer" quantitatively. This explanation does shed a little further light on the reason for the choice, though, and may appeal to the sense of humour of anyone who is interested in social sciences research methodology.

So now we know what the supermarket signs should have said. If anyone wants me to correct corporate signage in exchange for a trolleyful of groceries, do email!

The secrets of taming references - part one

Organising references is like herding animals. It is straightforward once you know how, but meanwhile you spend a long time chasing the strays!

Referencing is worthwhile paying some attention to, though, because accuracy of referencing features explicitly in many universities’ criteria for marking EdD assignments and PhD and EdD theses. There are even mildly sadistic external examiners who pride themselves on their almost psychic ability to home in on missing references.

Over the course of many months’ research references can easily get into a truly impressive muddle. Even the most meticulous person overlooks the odd error. I can make such a sweeping statement because I have never – ever – edited a text without finding a few referencing mistakes. Occasionally there is almost total confusion.

Ideally, as every academic writer knows, every work referred to in a text is included in a List of References at the end, with all the bibliographical details necessary to allow the reader to identify it. What goes wrong? There are the references that appear in the text but not in the list. Then there are the references in the list that have not been included in the final version of the text. Finally, there are the inconsistencies in the layout of the bibliographic details of the books, chapters and journal articles.

It is a well-kept secret that correcting a list of references can be easy if it is approached methodically. Over the course of the next few posts I shall cover the method I have found works best, describing the three stages one by one.

First, this is how to make sure that the all the works in the list of references also appear in the text:

1. Print a single-spaced copy of the list of references.
2. Use the computer’s ‘Find’ facility to search all the chapters for the name of every author in turn.
3. Check the date of publication and tick off the author’s name on the list, from Adomssent to Zuber-Skerritt.

You do not need me to point out that anything that is not ticked off on the printout is not in the text either! (I did say that it was easy.) Once any discrepancies have been addressed, you can be sure that all the listed references also appear in the main body of your research.

The next stage will be blogged in due course.

Prelims

Hello, welcome to the blog.

One of the joys of being an academic editor is being taken into new, fascinating worlds and being, for a few hours, a privileged spectator. And then you come back to earth with a bang as you notice a mis-typed word, an incorrect reference, or an inconsistency!

It was at one of these moments that the idea of a blog was born, out of the reflection that although every author is unique, many of the editorial problems that come to light are not.

So as I find or remember an interesting aspect of my work or a frequently-raised problem, I shall blog about it. This is intended both an online notebook for me and a very informal resource for writers, clients, passers-by and anyone who is interested in language and the craft of honing material for publication.

If there is a language problem you would like me to try to respond to, on the blog, please email me at pennybrown@good-impressions.net.