Choosing and briefing a thesis editor

How do I find an editor who has actually worked on theses?

The useful question is what they have edited at this level and to which style manual, and the useful answer is specific rather than a category. A thesis is not a long essay, and an editor whose academic experience is undergraduate coursework has not met the apparatus, the length, or the permission problem.

Two credentials in North America are examination-based or course-based rather than self-declared. Editors Canada certifies by examination, with separate credentials for proofreading, copy editing, stylistic editing, and structural editing, and a Certified Professional Editor credential for anyone who passes all four.¹ ACES and the Poynter Institute run three certificates assessed by timed final tests requiring 80 percent to pass.²

Neither is a license, and neither is specific to student work. What separates editors here is whether they know the guidelines that govern student work.³ An editor who has not read them is going to hear about them from your graduate school instead.

Do credentials mean anything for a thesis editor?

They show a test was passed, which is a narrower claim than most students read into it. What matters more on a thesis is whether the editor works to a written scope and keeps records, both of which the guidelines require.³

The checkable behavior is more useful than the credential. An editor who asks for your graduate school's policy before quoting has told you something, and an editor who has never heard of a permission form has told you something else.

References from students rather than from authors are the ones worth asking for. A thesis client can say whether the edit passed the graduate school's review, which is a harder test than whether the prose read well.

SFWA's Writer Beware makes a general point that applies here unaltered. An editor should have some verifiable presence, and a service that will not name the person doing the work is one to avoid.⁴

Should the editor know my discipline?

Less than students expect, and more than nothing. Under the permitted scope, an editor is not evaluating your argument, questioning your facts, or checking your method, because the guidelines put all three outside the role.³ Disciplinary depth is therefore not what you are buying.

What does matter is vocabulary and convention. An editor who does not recognize a term of art will query it, and forty unnecessary queries is a slow and expensive way to be told your field has its own words.

It also matters for the citation system. A discipline that uses author-date, one that uses numbered references, and one that uses notes each produce different consistency work, and an editor who has handled that system before is faster at it.

Should I ask for a sample edit?

Yes, and on a thesis it answers a question that matters more than usual: whether the editor stays inside the scope. A sample shows the depth of intervention and the form the queries take, which is exactly what the permission form is trying to control.

The EFA's guide notes that a brief sample edit helps in evaluating copyediting or line editing. It also notes that a developmental pass is too large in scope to be captured by a short sample.⁵ The same holds here, and a thesis sample is usually best taken from a middle chapter rather than the introduction.

Read the queries rather than the corrections. Editors Canada asks that queries be phrased to put the onus on the student, and a sample full of rewritten sentences instead of questions is a sample of the wrong service.³

What do I need to send the editor before they start?

Five things, and four of them are documents rather than the thesis. The written permission from your advisor specifying what the editor may do, your graduate school's formatting requirements, the style manual your discipline uses, and any departmental template all shape the work.³

The fifth is the file itself, complete, with the apparatus in it. Notes, bibliography, appendixes, tables, and figure captions are read and checked along with the prose, and a count that omits them produces a quote that moves.

Where you have a list of preferred spellings, invented terms, or names that must not be altered, that goes with it. Ten minutes assembling the list removes dozens of queries you would otherwise answer one at a time, in the weeks when you have least attention to spare.

When in the process should the editing happen?

After the content is settled and before the format review, which is a narrower window than it sounds. Editing a chapter your committee is still arguing about wastes the pass, because the revision will not have been edited.

Editors Canada's permitted default is language and mechanics, and language work assumes the sentences are the ones you intend to keep.³ A thesis still changing shape is at the wrong stage for it.

The graduate school's own review comes after. Utah State University's education college warns students that a professional editor may know a style manual well and still not know that particular graduate school's requirements for dissertations.⁶ Those are two separate checks, and the second one is not what an editor is being paid for.

How long will it take?

Longer than the same word count of ordinary prose, because a thesis carries apparatus. Notes, references, cross-references, tables, and figure numbering are all read and checked, and none of them moves at the speed of running text.

The other variable is you. A thesis edit produces queries by design rather than by accident, since the guidelines push the editor toward asking rather than fixing.³ Every day you take answering is a day added to the schedule.

Rush work commands higher rates, as the EFA's guide records.⁵ A defense date is also a fixed point in a way a manuscript deadline is not, so the room to absorb a delay is smaller. Booking early is worth more here than negotiating hard later.

What if the defense date moves?

Tell the editor immediately, in both directions. A date that moves later usually costs nothing. A date that moves earlier may cost a rush rate, or may not be possible at all if the editor has other work booked.

The arrangement worth asking for in advance is what happens if your committee returns the thesis with substantial changes after the edit. New text has not been edited, and a chapter rewritten after a copyedit sits in a file where everything else has been read.

Agreeing a rate for a second look, before you need it, costs one line in the quote. Asking for it in the week before a deposit deadline costs whatever the editor's remaining availability happens to be worth.

What does the editor need from my advisor?

One document, and it is the one students most often skip. The permission has to say what the editor may do rather than that editing is approved, because Editors Canada has the scope specified on a form co-signed by the editor, the student, and the advisor.³

Where your university requires acknowledgment, as Waterloo does in all cases where an editor has been used, the advisor is also the person who confirms what that acknowledgment should say.⁷ Getting the wording approved at the same time as the permission saves asking twice.

At EditFast a thesis is edited to the scope the advisor has approved, and we ask to see that document before quoting rather than after delivering. Every document a client sends us is treated in confidence, including the thesis, the permission form, and anything your committee has written on it.