Dr. Lyn’s Help for Self-editing
Part 1

The following self-editing tips are not in anyway meant as a guarantee that a proposal or a dissertation will pass review. These tips are only meant as an aid to help doctoral learners and candidates and other graduate students become more aware of the quality of work they submit. The general rule regarding whether you need an editor follows: If your chair tells you to get an editor, you need to hire an editor. If your chair does not mention an editor, these tips could certainly help you produce a paper that will pass review without an editor.
Top 10 APA Mistakes
The APA Style blog (2013) listed the top 10 APA mistakes. Throughout my 30+ years of editing dissertations and theses, these are the top mistakes I have seen. Please know, university editors usually flag these as well. Other mistakes I would add, although not technically considered APA mistakes, are missing references and non-matching references (e.g., Janes, 2012 in the reference list and Jones, 2012 in the text).
Read your paper backwards; do not laugh, this is quite an effective strategy for finding your own mistakes. Whatever you do, even if it includes hiring an editor, only submit as close to perfection as is humanly possible with every post and every submission of your thesis, prospectus, proposal, or dissertation. This will save you time and money.
Self-Editing Tips
First, never work on your paper unless you have clicked the paragraph symbol (¶) in the Paragraph box on Word’s Home tab. This function will allow you to see all formatting issues (e.g., every page and section break, every paragraph indentation, and every space).
Software Aids
Even after working for many years as high school teacher and adjunct professor, with two masters’ degrees and a specialist and doctoral degree under my belt, I never turned in one post or paper in my second doctoral program unless I had first run that post or paper through WritePoint (similar to Grammarly). I now keep Grammarly on my laptop and use it for every email, note, and letter. A PhD must set a certain standard in writing. If with my background I felt the need and still feel the need to use software to check my writing, it might be prudent if you did as well.
Most universities supply either WritePoint or Grammarly at no charge. If not, I strongly recommend you buy a subscription. By turning in a paper with no grammatical, punctuation, or spelling errors, you better your chances of your chair actually reading the content in your paper. This will save you much time overall.
https://www.writepoint.com/
https://app.grammarly.com
Begin the Correct Way Each Time
When I edit a dissertation or proposal, after I cross check references, I read the client’s dissertation manual. It is crucial to align each paper according to the specifics of the manual because even a different major can mean different requirements. In addition, if your university also supplies a rubric or checklist, be certain to follow this. Do not look at someone else’s dissertation and think this is how to write your dissertation. Read your manual and use your checklist.
Set the margins before you begin and make certain the page numbers are properly set. In addition, hold your cursor over the first few pages and check for the proper settings for spacing by right clicking and selecting “Paragraph.” If not, use “Select All” and highlight all text in the body of each chapter and set the correct spacing: Left—zero, Right—zero, Before—zero, after—zero, and line spacing—double. Then in “Paragraph,” click the “Line and Page Break” tab at the top and click “Widow/Orphan Control.”
Tabs
Make certain all your bullets, numbers, and indents are 0.5 and no more. This is a hot button with reviewers. Click on your ruler; it is just under the taskbar, far right, hover your cursor in the edge and you will get the “ruler” prompt to click. To get your numbers or bullets at 0.5, including the symbol, right click, “Paragraph,” “Special By,” Hanging 0.5.
For bullets or numbers, highlight your text and click on “Bullets” or “Numbering” in the “Paragraph” box in Word’s “Home” taskbar. You must use the same bullets throughout, and only use numbers for items in an ordered sequence. If you are not at 0.5, line everything up with your ruler by clicking on the first letter of the first item in your list. You will see the tab marks above in the ruler, just move them. Items in a list inside your text are listed by letters, not numbers: “Within a paragraph or sentence, identify elements in a series by lower case letters in parentheses” (APA, 2010, p. 64). Finally, if your tabs are giving you problems, clear them: Right click, “Paragraph,” bottom left-“Tabs,” Clear All.
Line Spacing
APA does address spacing (one space or two between sentences) but only in reference to journal articles, not for dissertations. For this reason, spacing varies by universities and even by chairs. Ask your chair but be consistent throughout your paper. For references in the Reference List, use only one space even if you used two spaces in your paper. Following are a few other issues you should check:
To read more click here to download Dr. Lyn’s Help for Self-editing
Top 10 APA Mistakes
The APA Style blog (2013) listed the top 10 APA mistakes. Throughout my 30+ years of editing dissertations and theses, these are the top mistakes I have seen. Please know, university editors usually flag these as well. Other mistakes I would add, although not technically considered APA mistakes, are missing references and non-matching references (e.g., Janes, 2012 in the reference list and Jones, 2012 in the text).
- Incorrect use of numbers
- Incorrect use of hyphenation
- Incorrect use of et al.
- Incorrect capitalization and punctuation in headings
- Use of since instead of because
- Improperly prepared tables and figures
- Failure to use the serial comma
- Failure to spell out abbreviations and acronyms as needed
- Inconsistent use of double-spacing between lines
- Incorrect use of and versus the ampersand
Read your paper backwards; do not laugh, this is quite an effective strategy for finding your own mistakes. Whatever you do, even if it includes hiring an editor, only submit as close to perfection as is humanly possible with every post and every submission of your thesis, prospectus, proposal, or dissertation. This will save you time and money.
Self-Editing Tips
First, never work on your paper unless you have clicked the paragraph symbol (¶) in the Paragraph box on Word’s Home tab. This function will allow you to see all formatting issues (e.g., every page and section break, every paragraph indentation, and every space).
Software Aids
Even after working for many years as high school teacher and adjunct professor, with two masters’ degrees and a specialist and doctoral degree under my belt, I never turned in one post or paper in my second doctoral program unless I had first run that post or paper through WritePoint (similar to Grammarly). I now keep Grammarly on my laptop and use it for every email, note, and letter. A PhD must set a certain standard in writing. If with my background I felt the need and still feel the need to use software to check my writing, it might be prudent if you did as well.
Most universities supply either WritePoint or Grammarly at no charge. If not, I strongly recommend you buy a subscription. By turning in a paper with no grammatical, punctuation, or spelling errors, you better your chances of your chair actually reading the content in your paper. This will save you much time overall.
https://www.writepoint.com/
https://app.grammarly.com
Begin the Correct Way Each Time
When I edit a dissertation or proposal, after I cross check references, I read the client’s dissertation manual. It is crucial to align each paper according to the specifics of the manual because even a different major can mean different requirements. In addition, if your university also supplies a rubric or checklist, be certain to follow this. Do not look at someone else’s dissertation and think this is how to write your dissertation. Read your manual and use your checklist.
Set the margins before you begin and make certain the page numbers are properly set. In addition, hold your cursor over the first few pages and check for the proper settings for spacing by right clicking and selecting “Paragraph.” If not, use “Select All” and highlight all text in the body of each chapter and set the correct spacing: Left—zero, Right—zero, Before—zero, after—zero, and line spacing—double. Then in “Paragraph,” click the “Line and Page Break” tab at the top and click “Widow/Orphan Control.”
Tabs
Make certain all your bullets, numbers, and indents are 0.5 and no more. This is a hot button with reviewers. Click on your ruler; it is just under the taskbar, far right, hover your cursor in the edge and you will get the “ruler” prompt to click. To get your numbers or bullets at 0.5, including the symbol, right click, “Paragraph,” “Special By,” Hanging 0.5.
For bullets or numbers, highlight your text and click on “Bullets” or “Numbering” in the “Paragraph” box in Word’s “Home” taskbar. You must use the same bullets throughout, and only use numbers for items in an ordered sequence. If you are not at 0.5, line everything up with your ruler by clicking on the first letter of the first item in your list. You will see the tab marks above in the ruler, just move them. Items in a list inside your text are listed by letters, not numbers: “Within a paragraph or sentence, identify elements in a series by lower case letters in parentheses” (APA, 2010, p. 64). Finally, if your tabs are giving you problems, clear them: Right click, “Paragraph,” bottom left-“Tabs,” Clear All.
Line Spacing
APA does address spacing (one space or two between sentences) but only in reference to journal articles, not for dissertations. For this reason, spacing varies by universities and even by chairs. Ask your chair but be consistent throughout your paper. For references in the Reference List, use only one space even if you used two spaces in your paper. Following are a few other issues you should check:
- Odd page breaks and blank pages. Do not leave a blank page or a half-filled page of text in the middle of a chapter; do not leave a short table/figure without text on the page. Do list a reference (Reference List) on two separate pages.
- A dangling line. At least two lines of a paragraph must be at the bottom or top of a page. If not, highlight text, right click, “Paragraph,” “Line” and “Page Break” (up at the top), then check widow/orphan control. I recommend you set this for your entire paper.
- A dangling heading. Use a page break to keep a heading from dangling at the bottom of a page. A heading must be followed by at least two lines of text before the page break. Make certain the entire table or figure is not on separate pages unless this is a necessity and then refer to the APA manual for guidance. The table titles and figure captions must appear on the same page as the table or figure.
- Inconsistency of spacing above headings. Make sure the space above headings is uniform; if you wish, add an extra space above headings to set off new topics on the page.
- Inconsistency of spacing above and below figures and tables. Use a soft break (Ctr. +Shift) between Table # and the title of a table and between the title and the table. Below a table or figure, set it off from paragraphs or other tables/figures on the same page with an extra space; make certain the spacing around tables/figures is uniform from chapter to chapter.
- Tables and figures in the margins. No text or graphics may be in the margin areas of the page.
To read more click here to download Dr. Lyn’s Help for Self-editing

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