DAVID HENDERSON has built up a distinguished career as an APA editor and academic writing consultant for dissertations and theses.
After earning his master’s degree in Journalism at Northwestern University, he spent five years working for an academic press and later for a major publishing house. His long track record has given him exposure to a wide range of business communications, scholarly non-fiction works, self-help books, Christian and other religious-themed writing, and theses and dissertations written by native and non-native English speakers.
He has worked with over a hundred graduate students at all stages of the thesis and dissertation writing process and in a wide range of academic disciplines, including education, history, literature, medicine, biology, sociology, and business. This experience has also made him a specialist in APA formatting, which is another service he offers to graduate students who are writing theses, dissertations, or capstone projects.
In addition to an eagle-eyed ability to spot errors of mechanics and a thorough comprehension of even the most arcane points of grammar, David relishes the process of working with the graduate student to get at the substantive components of a scholarly work and finding ways to make those parts cohere into a functional, unified whole.
Being an effective thesis and dissertation editor often necessitates being an educator of sorts, especially when working with less experienced academic writers. Hence, David helps students understand the craft of scholarly writing as well as the editorial changes made to the document. He has found this approach to be effective for producing polished works of scholarly writing.
David has assisted scholars by:
- Consulting on topic selection and question development
- Providing guidance on how to improve organization and flow of ideas
- Helping students streamline their essays by reducing wordiness, rewriting content to make it clearer and more succinct, and cutting redundant or repetitive text
- Conducting a literature review and applying the literature to one’s own research
- Clarifying research questions and articulating problem statements
- Devising a methodology that is suited to the research and precisely, thoroughly explaining that methodology in the dissertation
- Rewriting content to imbue the text with a stronger, more professional academic style
- Helping scholars with the heart of the dissertation: synthesizing the findings and developing the Discussion, Analysis, and Conclusions and Recommendations sections
- Ensuring compliance with APA guidelines, including citations, figure/table formatting, table of contents and headings, reference list, and other style guide requirements
- Conducting general proofreading and copy editing
CAROL LEVINE has B.A. and M.A. degrees in English Language and Literature from the University of Michigan and more than 25 years of experience as a writer, editor, English instructor, writing coach, and APA format expert. As the Writing Specialist for the University of Phoenix for 17 years, she worked extensively with students in the Master of Counseling, Master of Education, and MBA programs. Carol also developed and conducted numerous workshops on the use of APA format for University of Phoenix students and faculty members (e.g., The ABCs of APA; APA Formatting: From Soup to Nuts; APA: Changes in the Fifth Edition Manual) and earned the unofficial title of “APA Queen.”
Carol is not only an APA format expert. She is also a meticulous proofreader who takes pride in spotting errors that are overlooked by spell check programs, as well as a skilled editor with a vocabulary that enables her to complete the Sunday New York Times crossword puzzle. She is highly efficient, never misses a deadline, and is comfortable doing either paper or electronic editing.
HOLLY MONTY, MA, MAC, ELS | APA Format, Chicago Manual of Style, LaTeX (tables, figures, equations)
Since operating as a freelance editor and writer, Ms. Monty, a Microsoft Word and LaTeX expert, has worked on books and articles published by many of the world’s leading publishers, including Cambridge University Press, Oxford University Press, MIT Press, W. W. Norton, Sage, John Wiley, Springer, Lawrence Erlbaum, Pearson-Prentice Hall, Praeger, Greenwood, Blackwell, and other top names in academic and nonfiction publishing. To date, she has edited more than 2,000 published journal articles, more than 150 nonfiction books, and a wealth of dissertations and theses. Ms. Monty is proud to have worked with a diversity of students and academics from a broad range of our nation’s universities. Given her wealth of experience, she is adept at working within the precise terms of your university’s thesis/dissertation guidelines or with the publication guidelines of any peer-reviewed journal.
Holly graduated with honors from the prestigious Writing Seminars program of the Johns Hopkins University, ranked second in the United States, with a concentration in nonfiction writing. She also holds two master’s degrees: one a master of arts degree in linguistics from Rice University, and the other a master of arts degree in communication from Johns Hopkins (with honors). In 2010, she became certified as an editor in the life sciences with the Board of Editors in the Life Sciences (BELS). Holly is currently pursuing a PhD in technical communication and rhetoric.
An expert working with non-native speakers of English, Ms. Monty helps to transform nonfluently written medical text into stylistically and grammatically correct medical prose. She can work with any journal’s author guidelines to ensure that your submission meets expectations and requirements.
A good editor can work within just about any field, but Holly is particularly interested in the following areas:
- economics
- education
- film and film studies
- game theory
- history
- leadership studies
- linguistics, communication, and rhetoric
- nursing and medicine
- philosophy
- physics and geophysics, including water
- psychology and social sciences
- urban studies
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NANCY ROSENBAUM is a deadline-driven editor, proofreader, and fact-checker who specializes in APA format, Chicago Manual of Style (CMOS), Modern Language Association (MLA), American Medical Association (AMA), and Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) formats.
Nancy edits research papers, masters thesis, doctoral dissertations, and peer-reviewed journal articles. As an academic editing and scholarly writing specialist, Nancy:
- double-checks online texts to ensure completeness and accuracy of direct quotations (wording, punctuation) and publication details (author(s), title, publisher, date, page), as well as mirroring of parenthetical references to complete entries in the references section;
- marks and searches for sources corresponding to citations for which details were not included in References;
- marks unused sources in References, allowing students to choose whether to cite or delete them;
- corrects grammar and punctuation;
- marks too-short paragraphs;
- corrects presentation of numbers, fonts, and run-in and stand-alone list elements;
- checks word or page limits, as appropriate to EDT or journal guidelines;
- ensures gender neutrality and absence of bias in text;
- formats tables according to type;
- numbers equations;
- ensures completeness and accuracy of sources in References, including confirming the need for issue numbers, edition numbers, digital object identifiers, database names, URLs;
- applies styles to headings and subheadings, allowing her to create automated tables of contents that are readily updated if the document’s contents change;
- automatically numbers table and figure captions to generate readily updated lists of figures and tables;
- corrects section/page breaks to ensure page numbering follows APA or university-specific schemes;
- explains the nature of the errors made (in comments and/or cover memo notes).
SHANNON WILKINS holds a B.A. and an M.A. in English (Literature) in addition to a Ph.D. in English (Professional Writing). In the doctorate program, she learned to craft arguments of various types and to look at every document as a persuasive one.
Documents that Shannon edits have the following characteristics:
- They are unified. Commitments the writer makes early in a document should be delivered upon later in the manuscript. Readers like to know what they are getting into and that writers will follow through. Shannon also flags new information that appears later in a document with no introduction beforehand. Readers don’t like surprises.
- They are appropriately formatted. Shannon is an expert in AMA and APA style. She has edited for the Journal of Pediatric Pharmacology and Therapeutics, using AMA style. She is also a former scientific editor for Mayo Clinic. Furthermore, she has helped students to align their theses and dissertations with university style requirements.
- They are concise. Of course, theses and dissertations are intended to be extensive examinations of a topic, but they should not include extraneous information. Shannon is able to spot the most common words and phrases that waste the reader’s effort. In addition, she applies her in-depth knowledge of academic writing to reorder text when necessary while still keeping the author’s voice.
After going through the process of working with her own thesis and dissertation committees, Shannon can anticipate many of the questions that advisors might have about the claims made in a dissertation. With Shannon, you get an editor who knows the demands of APA style but who also knows the expectations of the academic community. Academic writers rarely need only style consultation. Her editing complements the scholarly work that writers have done to position them as credible sources within their fields.
Is more extensive help available?
Additional thesis and dissertation consulting services are available, including help in clarifying content, restructuring text, and modifying the paper as required by a faculty advisor or degree committee.
The experienced APA editors associated with this website have passed a series of exams to verify their writing and editing expertise and their advanced knowledge of APA format.
Note: We are not affiliated with, part of, or endorsed by the American Psychological Association. This is a network of freelance academic editors, APA writing consultants, and scholarly writing instructors.
Disclaimers
1. Your agreement, whether oral or written, is with your thesis or dissertation editor/consultant, not with the network as a whole or its coordinator.
2. It is the client’s responsibility to review all work completed to ensure accuracy and adherence to specifications.
3. We do not write or sell dissertations, theses, term papers, or essays. We will, however, polish your draft. The final product will be yours — legitimately.