Dissertation Editing Services

Most commonly used in the liberal arts and humanities studies, MLA (Modern Language Association) style specifies guidelines for formatting manuscripts and using the English language in writing. MLA style provides writers with a system for referencing their sources through parenthetical citation in their essays and Works Cited pages.

Knowing the most common steps for formatting your paper with MLA style is very important. The first thing you will need to do is place a heading in the upper left hand corner that consists of your name, your instructor's name, the course for which you are handing in a paper, and the date that the paper is due. In the upper right hand corner is where you add the page number heading, for which you also use your last name.

Typically, in an MLA paper, there is no title page (however, if your professor instructs that he wants one, please follow the guidelines of the person who gives you a grade). The title of your paper should be double spaced and then centered. For your assistance, this article will be modeled as an MLA paper.

For example, your paper would look like the version in the photo in this section. (Click on the photo to see a larger version)

Having a professional editor proofread your document is always a good bet to ensure a professional, polished paper that will help you attain the grade you want. Experienced academic editors who are well versed in technical editing, such as the editors at FirstEditing.com, will ensure your paper is properly formatted and consistent with the guidelines of your professor. Firstediting.com editors are well versed in many academic styles of formatting, including MLA. I hope the details provided have been helpful. I will be sharing more helpful insights on technical writing in future articles.

You've lost sleep, skipped meals and as for a social life-what's that? But you have that paper well-researched and have just put the finishing touches on the last draft. Now you want someone else, a professional, to examine your baby and make sure it's as perfect as possible. After all, a course grade-maybe a degree-is riding on that sucker.

But what sort of editing do you need, standard or technical? What level of editing will ensure that the fruits of your labor are presented as clearly and accurately as possible?

For term papers, research papers, theses, dissertations and even journal articles, your best bet is technical editing. Why?

Well, let's look at standard editing first: an editor doing a standard edit will check for subject-verb agreement and other grammatical gaffes, make sure verb tenses are correct in context, alert you to continuity problems and often suggest fixes, and so forth.

"But that's what I need, right?" you ask, scratching your head in confusion.

Well, yes, you need that and more-and that's where technical editing comes in.

When an editor does a technical edit, s/he does all of the above plus-and this is a very important plus-checks your citations/footnotes, references, captions, headings and subheadings for accuracy and adherence to the style guide required by your instructor, committee or journal, in addition to providing feedback on how the paper reads and alerting you to areas that might confuse the reader or that look as if they're missing citations.

"Oh, nobody ever really looks at the citations and references," you laugh, shrugging.

Trust me: they do. Profs can be almost insanely persnickety about things like margins and proper in-text citations, and if your content is amazingly well-written but you used the wrong margins or the wrong style guide, what you've written won't matter: the prof will fail you, anyway. After all that hard work, your paper could be rejected because of easily-fixable errors that a professional editor could have caught and corrected.

This is where technical editing can be a lifesaver.....and maybe a degree-saver, too. Take the time to have your paper edited by a professional, and be sure to ask for a technical edit. Professional technical editing by a firm such as FirstEditing.com can make sure your glowing content isn't obscured by glaring technical errors.

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