This case study is about Riya Sharma, a PhD scholar from Patna. Riya had started her doctoral journey in Zoology a couple of years ago. She had a passion for achieving a PhD degree and worked hard day and night to fulfill her goal. Riya had adequate knowledge about her subject and was consistent in her studies.

While she managed to find a unique and novel topic, conduct research, find the desired result, and complete the research document writing process, she didn’t know how to edit and also didn’t have enough time to edit her research document. Riya realized she was in a mess because submitting the research document without editing can doom your research journey. This is because, while writing the research document, grammatical, punctuation, subject-verb agreement etc errors unknowingly crawl into the research document and submitting research document with tons of errors is never acceptable.

Riya panicked at this stage. When she shared the same with her peers, they suggested her to go through PhD planner by PhD writing coach. Riya claimed “ as soon as I purchased PhD planner, without wasting some more time, I quickly went through the PhD planner and read the section where editing tips were mentioned. I must say, after going through the planner, the editing process became an easy process. I would suggest all scholars out there struggling out there to have a PhD planner by PhD writing coach as it serves as a comprehensive editing guide. Here I would like to mention some of the editing (also few proofreading) tips as suggested by the PhD planner to help the ones who are running out of time (just like I did) and do not have the PhD planner.

1) Look for spellings – Some words have more than one correct spelling. For example, “colour” & “color”, “realise” & “realize”, etc. While editing your research document, make sure you pay extra attention to such words. If you are supposed to write in UK English, then the words should end with ‘se’ ‘our’ whereas in US English it ends with ‘ze’, ‘or’.

2) Check for logical flow – There should be a logical flow between the sentences/paragraphs. Check if the data is organized and the reader can identify the key points at ease.

3) Watch commas, full stops – A punctuation when placed wrongly can alter the meaning of the sentences. Manually go through each line of the document and check for punctuation, especially commas.

4) Follow the guidelines– ensure that your content meets your University requirements. Review the position of titles, subheading, headings, etc.

5) Look for repetitive words – Reptiting words or ideas throughout the research document is not a good idea. Hence look for such words or ideas and either eliminate them or replace with its synonyms.

6) Check for citations – Cite your sources properly. Failing to do so will lead to plagiarism. Check for references and citations and ensure they are correct.

PhD planner consists of many such handy and useful editing (& proofreading) tips. To ensure your research document is polished, it is better to go through the PhD planner and follow the guidelines mentioned in it.”

Riya also adds “ PhD planner by PhD writing coach contains not only writing and editing tips but also lets you organize your data and remain free from the fear of losing the data.”

Riya was finally able to edit and polish her research document before the final submission. She has now got closer to her PhD degree with a perfect dissertation.