5 Elaborate Revision Strategies to Make Your Dissertation Better
As your dissertation comes to its conclusion you’ll find yourself wondering how to get it from first draft to final draft. Writing the whole thing out is a process by itself, but re-writing is a whole other ball game. Stop fretting, though, because we have you covered. Just follow these handy strategies and you’ll push yourself and your writing as far as you can:
- Read Out Loud
- Ask A Friend
- The Red Pen
- Read Backwards
- Try a Different Format
- Read Out Loud
- Ask A Friend
- The Red Pen
- Read Backwards
- Try a Different Format
Reading out loud makes you hear the mistakes you can’t see. By reading out loud you force yourself to become acutely aware of how your dissertation flows. You’ll find yourself stumbling over long and awkwardly phrased sentences and you’ll notice when you’re overusing the same words.
Friends are great. They’re essentially free work. Slaves, almost. You scratch their back and they scratch yours. Sometimes when you’ve created something, it can be hard to see what is and isn’t working. Friends, though, they are blunt. Load them up on coffee and force them to read through your work and tell you exactly what they think. What’s wrong, what needs changing, what needs expanding? They’ll figure it out for you. And one day, you can repay them the favor.
The red pen is your best friend in the editing endeavor. Print off your dissertation and take out your red pen. Go to town on it. Make a note of mistakes, paragraphs that don’t work, ideas that aren’t fully fleshed out. Don’t be afraid to run out ink. The more mistakes you spot now the less mistakes a read will spot later. Think of finding errors as a victory. You’re a gardener pruning weeds. Each one you catch is one less plant to kill your dissertation.
As your editing work goes on you’ll find you stop paying attention. The words much into one block of text, you can’t focus, you can’t think about it anymore. In this instance, it is really handy to read backwards. It’ll open your mind to a new way of approaching the text and you’ll be more likely to spot any spelling and grammar errors.
If you’ve typed your dissertation on a laptop of a pc, try reading a draft on paper, try one on an e-book, and try getting someone else to read it out loud to you. Seeing it in different lights is like seeing it anew, and you’ll be able to catch all of those pesky mistakes for good. Also try Dissertation Team blog to find fresh ideas for your writing and proofreading.