Writing is different to putting a thesis together. Even a person with decades of writing experience may be unfamiliar with the conventions of academic writing.

For those about to engage an editor (or about to embark on their thesis journey), a few points are worth considering with regard to style.

A thesis is almost always sent to an editor as a necessary, final step before being submitted for examination. The research will be complete, and the writing mostly done; a style will have been chosen and employed early on, and the presentation and formatting will be consistent with the university’s requirements.

Some styles are preferred to others within certain disciplines, which will likely be reflected by the style guidelines recommended to you at the start of your research. Law schools, for example, will recommend you adopt the use of the Australian Guide to Legal Citation (AGLC). Psychology departments are going to be partial to APA, the style of the American Psychological Association, though this style is favoured across many humanities and social science disciplines as well.

If a style has been recommended to you, try to stay with one edition as major revisions can apply to rules of style from one edition to the next.

If you have been left to choose a style, it may be worth reflecting on how you write before deciding. If you tend to write a lot of lengthy footnotes, perhaps a footnote style is a more natural fit.

A few points

Australian spelling convention prefers the use of ‘s’ to the American ‘z’ in words ending with ‘isa’, ‘ise’ and ‘yse’ (e.g., Americanisation, problematise, analyse). For some, this rule is merely a preference, an accident of history.1 For our purposes, however, the Macquarie Dictionary is the recognised authority on spelling, so best refer to it as the need arises. (You may even find many ‘ize’ constructions are acceptable secondary variants.)

Australian style uses single quote marks around quotations and double within singles. For example, ‘this is a word “quoted” within a quotation’. This rule has arguably become less rigid in recent years, so don’t panic if you find you have done the opposite throughout your thesis.

When long quotations are set as block quotes, the single quotation marks are dropped. Because the indentation effectively functions as single quotes, double quotation marks are used for quotes within a quote. (Different styles have their respective rules regarding the number of words and when to set a longer quotation as a block quote.)

Choice of font is often a stylistic one. Although, historically, serif typefaces have been preferred to sans serif in long-form print works, recent research suggests ‘no difference in the legibility of serif and sans serif typefaces either when reading from paper or when reading from screens.’2 This position is supported in the most recent APA Publication Manual. (See APA 7, 2.19.) Nonetheless, as some university style guides continue to recommend 12-point Times New Roman, you should consult with your supervisor for direction.

Although certain terms are necessarily defined in the text in the first instance, you may want to consider a glossary, especially if your work is of an interdisciplinary nature; your examiners may come from different fields and their focus will be weighted on their area of expertise.

One thing your editor cannot do is check the veracity all of your sources. Use of primary sources is favoured over secondary sources because it reduces a level of complexity that can sometimes be difficult for the reader.

Remember, there is no guarantee that your editor will pick up all copy-editing and proofreading errors in your text. So, when quoting from secondary sources, make sure your use of brackets and ellipsis marks correctly indicate the text you have inserted or omitted.

The emphasis on originality in the production of academic work means extra care should be taken to correctly acknowledge the work of others and to not misrepresent their original meaning in your text. Knowingly using the work of others without acknowledgement is a form of academic misconduct and can have serious consequences.

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1. Macquarie Dictionary (blog), 21 January 1014, https://www.macquariedictionary.com.au/blog/article/79/
2. John T. E. Richardson. (2022). The Legibility of Serif and Sans Serif Typefaces: Reading from Paper and Reading from Screens, SpringerBriefs in Education (Springer, 2022), 130, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-90984-0