Dissertation Checklist What to Do When Your Work Is (Nearly) Due

Dissertation Checklist What to Do When Your Work Is (Nearly) Due Dissertation Checklist: What to Do When Your Work Is (Nearly) Due Big dissertation deadline approaching? Hopefully, you have a draft you’re happy with and it’s time to get your dissertation ready for submission. But what do you need to do in these last days? Check out our dissertation checklist for three key steps in preparing your final piece of work. 1. Check Your Style Guide When you’ve finished redrafting, the first thing to do is reread your style guide. This should contain everything you need to know about how to present your work, including: What to include on a title or cover page. Whether to include a dedication or acknowledgements. The length and style of the abstract. How to format the table of contents. Whether to include a list of abbreviations. How to format the document (including page margins, tables, figures, illustrations, footnotes, endnotes, and the text of your dissertation itself). The referencing style you should use. The maximum word count and which sections count towards it. You’ll then need to double check that your dissertation follows these rules as closely as possible. 2. Proofread Carefully After making any final changes, make sure to proofread your dissertation one last time. Your focus here will be looking for typos and other minor errors to ensure that it is 100% error free. You may want to ask someone else to check your writing for you at this point (we’re always available). But if you do need to proofread your own work, try using the following tips: Read slowly and carefully, taking regular breaks as required. Print your dissertation out and check it on paper. Start at the end and work backwards through each chapter. Read problematic passages out loud. Look for different types of error individually (i.e., start out checking the punctuation, then the grammar, then the spelling, etc.). These tips should help you keep your concentration while proofreading. 3. Preparing to Submit Finally, when you have an error-free manuscript you can be proud of, you need to check your college’s guidelines for submitting a dissertation. This will usually include preparing: One print copy of your dissertation, professionally bound. One digital copy of your dissertation, typically in PDF form. Make sure to leave enough time before the deadline to get these ready. Your college should be able to recommend a local binding business for the print copy (or offer binding on campus). And you can export a document as a PDF file via Microsoft Word itself. Summary: Dissertation Checklist If you have a dissertation deadline coming up, make sure to tick off the steps on our dissertation checklist. These include: Reread your style guide to make sure that your dissertation follows it. Check your writing for typos (or have a professional do it for you). Read your college’s guidelines on preparing your dissertation for submission (this will usually involve creating one printed and bound version and one electronic version). And once you’ve submitted, we suggest taking a few days off to relax before preparing for your oral defense. Well done on getting this far, and let us know if we can help you over the finishing line.

Eight Different Types of Content Writing That Can Make You Money

Eight Different Types of Content Writing That Can Make You Money Content is the material produced To access this sort of work, try contacting agencies that work for clients marketing agencies, content houses, web development agencies, SEO companies, and the like. There is also a wide range of content platforms and job boards that put work the way of freelancers, such as Upwork, ProBlogger, and Contently. You can also source content work Product pages Businesses often use freelancers when they have a huge number of products and need unique copy for each – DIY products, say, or auto components. Here youll often have a specific template to follow, plus instructions on brand voice. PPC (pay-per-click) ad copy These are the paid-for ads that appear among your search results when you look for something via a search engine. Many businesses still live or die on their ability to rank highly in search, so will spend a lot of money on a range of PPC ads. The copy has to follow a strict but easy-to-learn template. PPC stands for pay per click – the search engine gets a small fee whenever anyone clicks on an ad. Destination guides Travel companies often use these factual guides for the places around the world they serve. The guides are usually written to a specific template and tone of voice, and will be designed to help the business improve its search rankings. Social content Many businesses use freelancers to help them keep up a supply of fresh tweets, LinkedIn posts, and Facebook posts. You may be repurposing content, highlighting competitions or giveaways, or creating new copy based on news stories that are relevant for the business. Featured snippets Featured snippets are those pulled-out sections of content that appear high on a search results page, often in the form of a list or QA. Because these look like Googles ideal answer to a query, they attract lots of clicks, and businesses try to (re)write their copy to get it selected as the snippet for a particular search query. Theres a whole best practice here, but youll usually be given guidelines. One tip is to adopt a neutral, Wikipedia-style tone thats not salesy or self-serving. Blog content   Blogs are still a very popular content tactic for businesses. Typically posts will be an expert take on a topic that the business has expertise on, e.g., an insurance company might look like at the impact of climate change on premiums. You may need to interview an expert, usually ebooks In content terms, these are usually lively, very visual, in-depth pdf treatments, editorial rather than salesy in flavor, of a particular area that a business wants to show potential customers it knows about. For example, an office massage company might want an ebook called Ten Fun Ways to Motivate Your Staff – one of which will just happen to be massage, of course. UX copy A more specialized – but still learnable – area, UX copy is all the text elements that help a user move through an online process such as opening a bank account or completing a holiday purchase. Here you usually work with wireframes of the planned digital route. The UX copy must be economical and intuitive and will often be tested several times with real users.