Tag: dissertation formatting

Two Tips for Cleaning Up Your Manuscript

Posted on by tarynsirove in Formatting, Microsoft Word Features

Once you know these, you can’t unknow them, and you will see them in all kinds of published theses and dissertations (including my own, oops!). 

Tip #1

Problem: A mix of smart quotes and straight quotes

Straight quotes look the same whether they open or close a quotation and are a holdover from the typewriter. Smart quotes are the curly quotation marks that indicate the opening or closing of a quotation.

Often, when we cut and paste quotes from the web or other sources, we can unwittingly bring the local formatting into our documents, causing straight quotes to show up where they shouldn’t.

Fix: Find and Replace All

Word is set to automatically use smart quotes, so all you have to do is put a quotation mark into “Find” and a quotation mark into “Replace” and select “Replace All.”

Word will replace all the quotation marks with smart quotes whether they were originally straight or already smart.

You can do this with apostrophes as well. 

TIP #2

Problem: Italicized commas after italicized words

Can you spot the difference?

Commas following italicized titles, such as The Color Purple, should be consistent with the punctuation of the surrounding text (as it is here). 

It can be difficult to notice the difference between an italicized comma and a regular comma if you’re not looking for it, but now you’ll see this everywhere, and it will bug you. You’re welcome.

Fix: Advanced Find and Replace 

Under Advanced Find and Replace, type a comma in the “Find what” field. 

Then use the dropdown and select Format > Font > Font Style > Italics

Under the “Replace” tab, type a comma in the “Replace with” field. 

Then select Format > Font > Font Style > Regular

You can’t use “Replace All” for this fix. Rather, you will have to decide whether or not to replace each instance individually, because there may be cases where the italicized comma should remain, such as when the comma appears within a title or italicized passage.

If you have any trouble executing these tips, please let me know here!

Early in the Dissertation Process? Here Are Some Process Tips

Posted on by tarynsirove in Formatting, Microsoft Word Features, Researching Tips, Writing Tips

These tips are geared toward technical and planning aspects of the dissertation process that can make your life easier by the time you’re getting ready to submit.

These are things I wish I knew—or did more consistently—when I was in the process of writing my dissertation.   

1. Look at example dissertations

  • Download previously published dissertations from your department. You can usually find them on the university library website, the graduate studies website, or a dedicated university research repository website.
  • Take a look at a few examples and look for things like, How are they formatted? Where do they insert their figures? Do the ones with epilogues look interesting or would a proper conclusion suit your work better? What are their abstracts like? Who do they thank in their acknowledgements? 

2. Consult the thesis formatting guidelines

  • It’s never too early to look at your university’s thesis formatting guidelines. What are your options when it comes to fonts and sizing? How should block quotes be indented? Should they be single- or double-spaced?
  • It can be a headache to go through and convert all the formatting at the end of the writing process, so it’s helpful to keep formatting in mind as you write.
  • Along these lines, pay attention to what happens to your formatting when you cut and paste content from other files or sources; the formatting is often imported along with the content. I’ve seen cases where line spacing or paragraph indents had to be checked and fixed paragraph-by-paragraph throughout the entire dissertation because, of course, if your block quotes are formatted differently than the rest of the document, you can’t simply select-all and apply a change to the entire document.
  • If you have an eye to formatting as you go, you’ll be smooth sailing at the finish line. 

3. Wrangle your long-form manuscript

  • Authors often use separate files to write their chapters. A benefit of using a single, long-form document is that you can more easily cut and paste and rearrange passages from one chapter to another. 
  • But it can be unwieldy to work with a long document if you’re not taking advantage of Word’s navigation pane—which allows you to create a clickable table of contents.
  • To learn how to create a long-form document that’s easy to navigate, click HERE. 
  • Make use of the “find” function to move around your document by searching keywords.

4. Organize your research

  • Fact: citations are frustrating. Reduce your pain by recording the full citation information of all your sources as you conduct your research, and by citing your sources as you write.
  • If you find yourself missing information from your citations, use google books, google scholar, or perplexity to find the missing parts. To find a page number, put a passage word-for-word in quotation marks into google.
  • When it comes to formatting your footnotes and bibliographic entries, the writing lab at Purdue University is an excellent resource.
  • When you’re researching in an archive, don’t forget to record the archive box and file numbers and titles. If you’re using your phone to take photos of archival items (with the archive’s permission of course), then also snap a photo of the file and the box information.
  • Use a scanning app on your phone to quickly create a PDFs.
  • And maintain a file naming convention for your PDF sources, as well as when you’re versioning your work. Your future self will thank your present one!

5. Keep the juices flowing

  • Writing is like a muscle. Many find it productive to keep that muscle strong by writing something—anything—every day.
  • Some write journal entries each day that may or may not have anything to do with their research, as per Joan Bolker’s wonderful advice.
  • Others keep a running file of their brainstorming. When I was writing my dissertation, I would often find myself sitting in front of my computer, thinking and thinking, trying to figure out what I wanted to say before I wrote it down. What I discovered was that it is much easier to figure out what I want to say when I free-write the thinking part. My free-writing might have sounded something like: “I don’t think this is an argument. Ok so then what would make it an argument? What if I connect this bit with the section in chapter 2…how would that change things?”
  • Both techniques take away the pressure to produce usable writing, and in the process, often end up producing usable writing!

If you have questions or wish there were a blog post that illuminated some other aspect of dissertation preparation, please let me know!

What Copy Editors Do and Don’t Do

Posted on by tarynsirove in About Copy Editing

As a copy editor who enjoys working on theses and dissertations, I often work with scholars hiring a copy editor for the first time. Sometimes they can feel unsure about what they’re getting into.

They might wonder, Will my writing be scrutinized and judged? Should I feel embarrassed about grammar mistakes or overlooked gaps in logic? Will the copy editor bulldoze over my writing style?

Such concerns make sense considering the nature of academic scholarship: writing in isolation on the one hand and sharing work under rigorous scrutiny on the other. Copy editing is a great way to help bridge this divide. I’d like to offer reassurance that a copy editor is there to support their clients, not to judge them or change their work.

Freelance copy editors provide a second pair of eyes on writing that may have been weeks, months, or years in the making. If you’ve read over the same sentence a hundred times, would you notice an extra “the” in there? And when you are steeped in the nuances of your ideas, can you always predict how your messages will land for someone coming to them for the first time? Copy editors bring that distance, and they can support you in delivering clean and clear writing to your readers.

A copy editor’s job is to notice things, suggest changes, and help you say what you want to say.

What Copy Editors don’t do:

  • Rewrite your work.
  • Make changes according to our personal preference or personal style.
  • Implement changes without your knowledge (all suggested changes are tracked).
  • Judge your writing.
  • Police grammar (a good editor will respect cultural, political, or creative decisions that veer from dominant language rules).
  • Criticize the writing or the writer.
  • Have the final say.
  • Guarantee a perfect manuscript (editors are human!).

What Copy Editors Do:

  • Correct errors in grammar, spelling, and usage (e.g. comprised or composed?).
  • Suggest changes to wording or organization for the sake of clarity and flow.
  • Query the author when unsure about meaning or intent.
  • Preserve the author’s voice.
  • Check that formatting is consistent.
  • Use track changes for the author to accept or reject.
  • Follow a style guide (e.g. Chicago, APA, MLA).
  • Work with authors or publishers to meet specific needs.
  • Field questions (any questions!).

What if I’m on a budget?

A freelance copy editor can:

  • Help you assess what type of editing would be most worthwhile to focus on.
  • Provide resources and tips so you can do certain things yourself, such as format your footnotes.
  • Work on a portion of your project that’s giving you grief.

Speaking more personally, I know how stressful and overwhelming the process of writing a dissertation can be, which is one of the reasons why I enjoy supporting graduate scholars in their academic journey. It is important to me to bring care and compassion to the editing process.

If you’re still unsure, please reach out to schedule a complementary phone call to chat about your needs!

Make A Table of Contents in Word

Posted on by tarynsirove in Formatting, Microsoft Word Features

This post is for those of you who think to yourselves, “I know there’s a way to make a table of contents in Word, but I don’t have time to learn that right now.”

Making a Table of Contents takes way less time than you think.

Once you have assigned heading styles to your chapters and subheadings, you can create a Table of Contents in three clicks.

HOW TO CREATE A TABLE OF CONTENTS

  • Assign headings to your chapters and subtitles (learn how HERE).
  • Click References > Table of Contents
  • Choose a Style (I chose Classic)

Here is what my Table of Contents looked like with Word’s default style settings:

You can change the fonts, font size, style, and colour using your usual font tools under the HOME tab in your Main Menu:

Done!

*** If you change anything in your document that should be reflected in the Table of Contents, you must update it manually. Double-click the Table of Contents in your document, and under the drop-down menu, choose Update Table…