It's important to note that Package 3 is the only service that features our comments and suggestions (in the ‘Comments’ column) relating to unclear language, misleading or contradictory content, errors in your argument, and other potential pitfalls.

What does proofreading of a Master thesis entail?

When it comes to proofreading a Master thesis, students are of course our clients. Perhaps you’ve written your Master thesis but errors in orthography, punctuation or content still need to be identified and removed from the text. If necessary, a plagiarism check should also be performed.

This is what we offer: we proofread your Master thesis and polish the text to make it easier and clearer to read. In addition, we point out content-related errors – for example, if you contradict yourself, numbering is not correct (for example, in the table of contents) or the proportions in a pie chart add up to 101%.

In short, we do our very best to improve what you might perhaps have missed.

Do I need proofreading for my Master thesis?

As a rule, the answer to whether you need proofreading is “yes”, because some Master theses contain an average of two errors per line, which would call for around 60 interventions per page. Here is an overview of why proofreading is so necessary:

Improving your grade

The goal of writing your Master thesis is for you to demonstrate that you can independently develop a topic within a deadline using scientific methods. Once the challenging research and writing tasks have been achieved, however, you may find that the grade for your Master thesis is lower than you’d expected due to poor spelling and punctuation, an unclear or clichéd writing style, redundancies, repetition and omission of context, or a conclusion that seems rushed. Our native-language writers can address these shortcomings for you and offer suggestions and advice that have led to better overall grades for many students’ Master theses.

Counteracting accusations of plagiarism

Students often fail because they are confronted with accusations of plagiarism. The worry that they might be accused of plagiarism in their Master thesis can give rise to anxiety for many students. Understandably so, as a lot of effort goes into writing a Master thesis, you only have a limited number of attempts to pass, and ultimately you don’t want to fail because of it. Protect yourself from such accusations by having us perform a plagiarism check for your Master thesis. We use specialised software that detects potential plagiarism. No one should be able to accuse you of not having checked your Master thesis for plagiarism before you submit it to your supervisor or examiner.

Enhancing readability

Your examiner reads many Master theses each semester, not just yours. That’s a big commitment of time and effort on the part of your examiner.

Submitting a good Master thesis that meets your examiner’s expectations means that you should be viewed in a good light when it comes to your viva voce (oral examination). So let us improve your Master thesis in such a way that your examiner doesn’t need to spend extra hours trying to make sense of your argument, is pleased that your work is clearer and smoother to read and doesn’t stumble on clunky constructions or phrasings in every other line. Making your examiner’s job easier will have a positive effect on your overall grade.

Remove content problems before the oral defence of your Master thesis

An effective proofreading of your Master thesis will also help you to prepare for the oral exam. If we’re asking challenging questions when we proofread your Master thesis, you’ll be able to address these before you have to defend your work in the oral exam. To help you avoid the examiner misunderstanding your points (perhaps because your language use, and therefore your argument, is unclear) we remove these pitfalls and ask questions during the proofreading process. You will have plenty of time following the proofreading of your Master thesis to address and correct these issues before you submit the final version of the Master thesis to your examiner. This will also ensure that your performance in the oral exam is more confident and better supported by the appropriate arguments and evidence.

Is proofreading a Master thesis legal?

Absolutely. Not only is proofreading a Master thesis legal, it’s specifically recommended by academic institutions. The Master thesis is your intellectual property, and you’re also required to make a declaration of its authenticity as an original piece of work. But this doesn’t mean you’re not allowed to have your writing (in this case your Master thesis) corrected. We proofread your Master thesis; we don’t write it for you. That’s “ghostwriting” – not our department. You alone are responsible for the content of your Master thesis. However, we will enhance your Master thesis by proofreading it (reading the whole text at least twice, whatever its length) and pointing out any discrepancies, inconsistencies or problems of style.

Universities also recommend proofreading of a Master thesis. Lecturers are often grateful to read corrected Master theses because it saves them time and effort. After all, we prefer to read good books rather than bad ones.

- the Freie Universität Berlin recommends proofreading on its website “Tips for the Bachelor Thesis”.

- the LMU Munich: “In addition to friends, fellow students and relatives, you can also ask a professional to proofread your bachelor thesis.”

- the WU Vienna: “However, we strongly recommend that you find someone who can proofread the thesis for you – if possible also with regard to content, but in any case with respect to spelling and formal usage. Also get feedback from people outside your field to check whether the work is clearly structured and understandable.”

- the TU Munich: “Find someone who can proofread your work. Because often as an author you are ‘operationally blind’ and no longer see your own typos, spelling and grammatical errors. Friends, relatives or fellow students (who are not going through thesis stress themselves) are excellent for this.”

- ETH Zurich: “It is also recommended to have the thesis proofread by external parties before handing it in, so that logic and spelling mistakes etc. can still be corrected if necessary.”

- the Catholic University of Eichstätt-Ingolstadt: “There are frequent violations of spelling and grammar rules in the paper. Since your own mistakes are particularly difficult to recognise, it is also advisable to have a paper proofread by others.”

Is a plagiarism check possible for the Master thesis?

Yes, we also offer a plagiarism check for your Master thesis. This costs €30.00 (excl. VAT) for up to 150 pages. For longer texts, an additional charge will be necessary.

Why are we suitable for proofreading your Master thesis?

In the following remarks, we clarify why we’re convinced that we’re your ideal partner for proofreading your Master thesis.

References

We hope our references speak for themselves.

After all, we don’t just proofread Master theses, we also proofread texts from clients in business and politics – from menus to quarterly reports, from personal statements to conference brochures. This trust that companies place in our work is transferable to the proofreading of Master theses. For this reason, our regular customers are not only firms but also students who may come to us first with term papers and a Bachelor thesis and who then use our services again for their Master thesis.

So put your trust in our references and let us proofread your Master thesis. We’ll enhance your draft to ensure your completed Master thesis is as readable, polished and rewarding as it can possibly be.

Transparency creates trust

You’ll be fully informed about every step in the process of editing your Master thesis. After reviewing your text, we will first provide you with an offer, which will specify the service and the final price. If you agree to this offer, the working process will follow. No hidden costs – you pay only what’s been pre-agreed and written into the offer that you signed for.

Customer testimonials

We’ve been well-praised for our work, which of course makes us happy. That’s why we’re pleased when satisfied clients come back to us. You can read what our customers have to say about us on this site. Many customers have in fact recommended us to others. And it makes us especially proud when customers tell us that their Master thesis ended up with an improved grade.

We first review your Master thesis – and then devise a suitable schedule

Before you receive an offer from us, we review your Master thesis. We check whether we understand the content of the topic. We determine the time required to complete your Master thesis. Based on this, we come up with a time frame for proofreading and editing your Master thesis, always making sure we offer you enough “buffer time” for you to meet your deadlines.

An example

You’ve written a Master thesis of 75 pages. In this case, we would calculate about three days, i.e. about 25 pages per day. If necessary, we might need one or two days extra. In total, you’d get your Master thesis back after around five days; of course, we always inquire about any interim or final deadlines.

This realistic schedule will help you to plan the time you’ll need after we’ve proofread your Master thesis. (You should also calculate the time needed for the copy store to print and bind your completed Master thesis.)

We also reject Master theses

We reject Master theses with an unrealistic time frame. Because we want to do a good job, a certain time frame is needed. If necessary, you can arrange an extension of the deadline for your Master thesis with your supervisor. It’s important that you hand in a high-quality Master thesis, but your grade shouldn’t suffer because you’re pressed for time.

Prices

Prices vary greatly from one proofreading service to another, and we’re aware that our service isn’t the cheapest. But we’re fine with that, because we attach the highest importance to quality. Editing text properly takes time. This time, in turn, goes hand in hand with a financial cost. This means that, in order for us to proofread your Master thesis optimally, certain prices are unavoidable. After all, you want your Master thesis proofread and edited conscientiously and not just quickly.

However, we tend to set lower prices for the proofreading of a student’s Master thesis than we do, say, for proofreading a company report.

No advertising with “low prices”

For us, quality comes first; we associate quality with corresponding prices. In addition, the term “favourable prices” is a bit of a misnomer. A good editor knows, of course, that a price can’t be “favourable”, because a price doesn’t represent a good or service, but only describes the cost of that good or service. So prices can be “low” or “high” but not “favourable”, whereas the good or service can of course be deemed “favourable”.

Our editors are university graduates

All our staff have a university degree. This requirement is to ensure that your Master thesis is proofread appropriately by people familiar with the schedules and workflows involved in writing a Master thesis. Only someone who knows these requirements themselves can give you the best tips and advice.

Old (and older) hands

Our team members are all at least 35 years old. This helps ensure that nobody inexperienced will be proofreading your Master thesis, but only those editors who have already gained experience in proofreading, editing and working with text.

We know the procedures, processes, and concerns that you’re facing, and we’re convinced we’re the right partners to help you successfully complete your Master thesis.

We aren’t based abroad

You’re naturally looking for a proofreading service you can rely on. The deadline for your Master thesis is getting closer, so you’re probably already under time pressure. Therefore, the editor of your Master thesis should be as accessible as possible. That’s us. We’re located in Berlin and are easily reachable for questions – even on weekends and holidays.

Have we made you curious? Then please feel free to contact us at:

Tel.: (030) 755 41 38 - 9

E-mail: info@hauptstadtstudio-freier-lektoren.de

Contact person: Mr. Frank Elminowski

Graduate in business administration / parliamentary stenographer / proofreader and editor

How much will the proofreading of my Master thesis cost?

That depends on which of our three service packages you take advantage of. We offer the following three service packages:

Package 1: Proofreading “light”

Package 2: Proofreading “BASIC”

Package 3: Proofreading “COMPLETE”

We recommend the COMPLETE proofreading (our third package), because only in this package do we include our comments and notes (in the Comments column on ‘Track Changes’ mode) where we might see discrepancies or inconsistencies in your work. Although it’s the most expensive package, 99% of our clients choose this.

Is proofreading my Master thesis worth it?

Yes, and for several reasons:

Improve the readability of your Master thesis

Your professor or supervisor will be reading not only your thesis but many others as well. He or she will gain a certain impression of the way you write, think and formulate arguments, just as with other students. So this is your chance to shine compared to others. In this comparison, you can’t afford to hand in a superficially argued or clunkily written paper. Please don’t give your supervisor the feeling that you assume they already understand what you mean. Show that you’ve made an effort. A poorly written paper full of mistakes will leave a bad impression and your professor will perhaps end up feeling negatively towards you and your work. Therefore, give them a good feeling with your work so that they’ll also remember you positively when the time comes for your oral exam (viva voce).

Eliminate discrepancies before the oral exam

During the proofreading of your Master thesis, in the right-hand margin we’ll include comments, suggestions and queries about your content. And many an “awkward” question from our side may elicit a “eureka” response in you. We hope that, by asking these questions or giving remarks, we might help you see what’s still lacking in your work. The more ambiguities we clear up before the oral exam, the fewer awkward questions your professor or supervisor will bowl at you during the oral exam. You may be as well-prepared as possible for the content of your paper, but one “odd” question from your supervisor can be enough to make you uncomfortable just because he or she may have misunderstood the content. Therefore, let’s get things wrong first and ask (what to you may seem) unusual questions so that we can help you avoid difficulties in the oral examination.

Last attempt to pass

Occasionally, it can happen that your Master thesis represents the last attempt to qualify for your degree. At this point – at the latest – you should also make use of a proofreading service, because it’s too often underestimated how much editing is still needed for the Master thesis. A wrongly numbered table of contents, missing chapters, pie charts that don’t add up to 100% and a conclusion that’s too rushed or brief are just some of the most common pitfalls. It’s possible that your Master thesis is still less than perfect after the proofreading, but perhaps we’ve turned a 5.0 into a 2.7 (or a D into a B) – which could be the difference between a pass and a fail.

Ensuring your Master thesis is “fit to print”

Some students publish their Master theses as a book. Proofreading should definitely be considered here, to make sure your book is professionally prepared for print. After all, your Master thesis may eventually be read by many – and sell as many copies as possible.

Cooperation with a company

Often, when people are doing an internship, they decide to write their Master thesis about the company or institute where they work. In doing so, you shouldn’t disappoint the company in question with a poor Master thesis, because the quality of the Master thesis not only reflects on you but also on the company or institute.

Is a test-proofreading of my Master thesis possible?

To make it easier for you to decide on the basis of our work, you have the opportunity to send up to two A4 pages of your Master thesis which we’ll proofread and correct for you, absolutely free of charge.

How do I pay for the proofreading of my Master thesis?

You can pay for the proofreading of your Master thesis by bank transfer as well as by PayPal.

Note: When it comes to bank transfers, we’ll usually ask you for the bank transfer receipt. This can be saved as a pdf file when you’re doing online banking. This shows, for example, the TAN number that was used for the transfer. This is especially helpful before the weekend, for instance if you need your Master thesis on a Monday but you’re unable to transfer the amount until Tuesday. Having the transfer receipt means we can start proofreading your Master thesis straight away.

What will the corrections look like in my Master thesis?

When proofreading your Master thesis, we always use Word’s correction mode (in the ‘Review’ menu, under ‘Tracking’ and then ‘Track Changes’). This means that every change in the text is displayed in colour, when you click on ‘All Markup’). You will see removed words on the right side of the correction margin.

For comments in the margin, we highlight words, phrases or sometimes whole sentences. In this case, a comment at the end of the highlighted part of the text also appears in the right-hand column.

You will receive two versions back

After we’ve proofread your Master thesis, you’ll always receive two versions back from us.

In the first version, you’ll be able to see all our changes.

In the second version, these changes have already been included in the document. But our marginal comments are still in the text. We recommend that you continue working directly with this second version, so that you can concentrate on the comments that appear in the margin. You can then easily delete these comments once you’re satisfied you’ve addressed any suggestions we raised.

How can I order a proofreading of my Master thesis?

Contact us by phone or e-mail.

Phone: (030) 755 41 38 - 9  

E-mail: info@hauptstadtstudio-freier-lektoren.de

Just explain your project to us and ask for a quote. Key information would include your deadline, the scope of the project and its current status (whether your text appears as a first draft or is broadly complete, for example).

For our offer, we would also need your full postal address, as well as confirmation of the service package you’d like to receive:

Package 1: Proofreading “light”

Package 2: Proofreading “BASIC”

Package 3: Proofreading “COMPLETE” (recommended)

Please send us all the texts you would like us to proofread so that we can determine the number of “standard pages” (1 standard page = 1,600 characters), as these are necessary for calculating our offer fairly.

How can I save money on proofreading?

Ask your family for support

Perhaps you can ask family members whether they could support you with the costs of proofreading. Proofreading a Master thesis can perhaps also be “donated” as part of a birthday present or Christmas gift.

In cooperation with companies

Are you writing your Master thesis in cooperation with a company? In most cases, it’s possible to negotiate funding for the proofreading – some companies may even bear the entire costs for the proofreading of a Master thesis.

In cooperation with a university

Some Master theses are written as a joint project with a university, college or other academic or research institute. Perhaps you can inquire there for funding for a proofreading, if this applies to you.

5% discount on the Master thesis

Have you already used our services for your Bachelor thesis? In that case, you can get a 5% discount on proofreading of your Master thesis.

FAQs about the proofreading of a Master thesis

How long would it take to proofread my Master thesis?

Depending on the amount of work and the quality of what you submit (in terms of writing, layout, pagination and referencing, for instance), we can usually proofread and edit 20 to 25 pages per day. We always allow for some buffer time. For a 75-page master thesis, we tend to assume three or four days; if all goes smoothly, you’ll have your Master thesis back after only three working days.

Why are there more pages on the pricing quote than I’ve written?

When we receive your Master thesis, we determine the number of characters you’ve written and calculate the number of so-called “standard pages” from this. A standard page consists of 1,600 characters, regardless of font size and number of illustrations, for example. In this way, pricing remains fair as only the actual written text is counted. Some authors use a small font and single spacing, while others include a lot of graphics, figures and tables – but in the end only the number of written characters counts. There are differences between the number of A4 pages and the number of so-called standard pages. However, the calculation is always fair – both for you as an author and for us as editors.

Incidentally, some people ask us not to proofread references, so please be sure, when necessary, to clarify which parts of a text you need proofreading.

Where can I have my Master thesis printed and bound?

Any copy store will do both very quickly. It usually takes about 30 minutes to have your work printed and bound. However, you should bear in mind that a copy store’s services can be more in demand during some periods compared to others. So try to avoid that last-minute dash – it’s advisable to contact your local copy store in advance for more information.

What if my Master thesis is subject to non-disclosure considerations?

If your Master thesis is subject to a restriction notice (perhaps because it contains sensitive information regarding security or healthcare policy, for example), you will receive an offer from us with a corresponding clause stating that we undertake not to disclose internal details of your Master thesis to any outside parties.

How many days before the deadline should I submit my Master thesis for proofreading?

That depends on how extensive your work is, how complete or incomplete it still is, and the quality of the text we receive. If your work is already broadly complete, relatively straightforward to read and around 75 “standard pages” long, then we’ll probably need three or four days to fully proofread your Master thesis.

Please note that you might need another one or two days for reworking and that your Master thesis will generally need to be printed, bound and submitted to the relevant academic bodies.