Supaproofread Blog

10 Reasons Why You Should Study in the UK

The first consideration when thinking about studying is the subject area you wish to study. Usually that’s the easy part, but deciding where you should study can be difficult and confusing, especially if you intend to study abroad.

In this article we will give you 10 reasons why studying in the UK is the perfect choice.

1. Renowned and Well-Respected Universities

UK universities are regularly featured in ranking league tables such as The Times’ Higher Education Rankings and the QS World Rankings. Many UK universities are featured in the rankings, with at least a third of the top 10 comprising of UK universities. Often the University of Cambridge, which is one of the oldest and most respected UK universities, holds the top spot.

2. Internationally Recognised Courses & Qualifications

The courses and the qualifications offered in the UK are internationally recognised and highly regarded by employers around the world. A qualification from a well-respected UK university is likely to give you the edge when pursuing employment opportunities in the future.
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Common Mistakes in Written English

Picture of a german military sign — What mistakes do you notice?

People are the same everywhere. Whether you receive work from the west or the east, from America or China, from Dublin, Dundee or Humberside, the same mistakes are made. Of course, if no mistakes were made then there wouldn’t be the need for proofreaders. Here are some of the common errors made by authors. Let’s start at the beginning.

Contents page – think of the reader who has to wade through it. Is there really a need for chapter headings (1), subheadings (1.1) and sub-subheadings (1.1.1) all with lengthy descriptions? If your contents page is itself longer than a page it’s too long. Call me a minimalist, but a chapter-heading page is plenty. Also, I’m one of the proofreaders who will need to redo every page number when the piece is finished.

Introduction – or the enigmatically titled ‘abstract’ opening paragraph. More often than not the notion of abstract is horribly apt since it’s rare to be able to figure out what’s coming next. And isn’t that the point of the Introduction? To set out what’s coming up? Perhaps lecturers and question-setters should abandon the word abstract, since it seems to encourage people to be more, well, abstract when they should be descriptive.
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What is Proofreading?

picture of a document with proofreading changes from an editor — What is proofreading?

A lot of people don’t understand why proofreaders and editors exist; after all, English isn’t really that important, is it? Well, this common misconception is just that, a fallacy about how important the process is. But, I believe it’s down to the fact that most people just don’t understand the process and many ask what is proofreading?

Proofreading, or ‘copy checking’, originally referred to newspapers, where an editor would take typeset paper and check the text for errors against an original manuscript. These days, even in newspapers and magazines, which often have their sub-editors proof on screen, it’s all done digitally. Two printed resources are rarely checked against each other. The notion of the activity itself is designed to address both issues of content and visual consistency.

Proofreading & Academic Work

In terms of student work, one takes an overall view. Proofreaders haven’t studied the subject themselves so trust that the author has composed their arguments having been given the correct teaching, has understood the subject and disseminated the information correctly in response to the question, brief or task. There are various reasons for employing a proofreader. A great deal of the work I complete is submitted by foreign students and, frankly, they’re all pretty clever, otherwise they wouldn’t have been funded or sponsored by their families, government or educational institution to even study abroad. [Read more…] about What is Proofreading?

Managing Your Dissertation Time Through the Summer

Being a university student enrolled in a masters’ degree program can be challenging for anyone, let alone if you are concentrating on your final degree paper of the year: your master’s dissertation. Not only will you have worked very hard on the planning, design and research processes, but you will also be socialising with your friends and enjoying your last days before you embark on your career path. As one of the leading dissertation proofreading companies in the UK, we understand that a little extra thought into the process goes a long way.

Whether you enjoyed working on your dissertation is a question you will need to ask yourself when you have finished writing it during the summer months; you may have had a significant amount of passion when starting the process, but then looked at the many thousands of words to be written in dismay much later. Also, writing a masters’ dissertation is similar to writing an undergraduate paper. However, you need to recognise that you must produce a paper that requires a significant amount of effort and present a research study that provides the reader and your supervisor with the information that is required.

Dissertation Proofreading and Editing Explained

Well, it’s that time again for undergraduate students in the UK and abroad to submit your dissertation research paper to your academic institution. At Supaproofread, we want to remind you that all of those endless nights spent in front of your computer screen shouldn’t be thrown away without hiring a dissertation proofreading service to review your work.

You’ve finally done it, hurray! Starting the process of researching and writing your academic research paper was probably really difficult. I know it was for me when I attended university a few years ago; it was very daunting as an undergraduate, as I had only written three-thousand word essays in my first and second years, so ten thousand words seemed quite a lot! Also, the fact that I had to conduct lots of primary research for the paper made the entire process a hassle — oh, and the hypothesis had to be original… It isn’t until you get past the data processing and start to actually write an evaluation of the research that you have collected until you finally, I believe, gain a true sense of the research paper and overall process. Your mind is numb with the questionnaire or survey you changed at least 20 times, and SPSS annoys you because ‘it just doesn’t seem to work for me’. We’ve all been there, and some of us have chosen to return to do it time and again for higher qualifications such as a master’s degree or PhD. It does get slightly easier, but it’s also a pain.
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Using APA Referencing in Practice

Writing academic papers will require a referencing style; Michael has touched on the use of Chicago, MLA and APA in the past but in this post I’m going to explain and outline the APA referencing system.

APA stands for the American Psychological Association and their referencing style is very common. I’ll cover off UK and US referencing styles in future posts so don’t think I’m singling APA out for special attention.

The APA system is broken into two main parts:

In-text citations
A reference list