just wondering what peoples thoughts/ experiences are of having your thesis proof-read. i am contemplating it but have a sneaky suspicion it may be rather expensive....

Your supervisors are there to comment on the subject matter/structure/validity of the thesis, and you could get a friend/fellow student/helpful post-doc/anyone vaguely literate to read through and spot typos/bad grammar for you. You shouldn't really need to get a paid proof-reader - I certainly don't know anyone who has.

firstly, it depends on whether English is your mother tongue. Secondly, how good is your writing. I definitely will give my thesis for proof-reading and know several people who have done it. It is not cheap but it is worth it.

english is my mother tongue but i still make mistakes! for instance things like spelling 'from' as 'form' arent picked up as spelling errors but are still wrong and i think we often get too close to the thesis to read it properly.
any ideas how much it costs?

If english is your mother tongue than proofreading will be cheaper for you:) Some people charge per hours, some per number of words, so in your case it would be cheaper to have someone charging per hour. Rates are very varied, I have heard from £200-500 per thesis. A suggestion from my experience-choose somebody who has been recommended to you by someone who has used that person's service. Otherwise it will be like with me- I paid for proofreading but both examiners still pointed out many grammar mistakes in thesis:(((((

wow that is a lot of money - i hope you managed to get some of it back verdy seeing as your proof reader clearly didnt do a good job!

if no-one will help you out and you don't want to pay for it, so you have to do it yourself, a trick is to proof-read from back to front.

ideally you could proof-read a friends thesis who would proof-read yours, if both of you are native english-speakers.

phder: no, I was too exchausted after MPhil that didnt have energy left to chase tht proofreader:)