Hi, these kinds of threads get posted all the time...but I need to share this people who might be in the same boat. I've handed in my PhD and am now re-reading it pre-viva. I am spotting loads of typos; I've counted 50 so far and have two more chapters to review. I can't understand how I missed so many of them when I was preparing for submission. I feel depressed because they devalue my work and will likely put the examiners in a negative frame of mind and make them more critical. I am ashamed of my own sloppiness and annoyed that I didn't give myself more time to re-read the thesis prior to hand-in. I feel like I've let myself down; I'd wanted to get through with no corrections (ha!) and now this won't happen. Friends say it's an achievement to finish a PhD, but at the moment I feel like recalling the thesis and resubmitting...I just feel really upset.
If typos are the only problem in your thesis then you are golden. Seriously, take a list into the viva with you, correct them before getting it bound. Done. They won't care as long as it doesn't affect the results you give.
I wouldn't worry unduly. My situation was much worse, I did some last minute amendments to my Figures because conversion to PDF was corrupting some of them, and ended up with the wrong x-axis labels on all the Figures from one chapter! So you can imagine how I felt. Anyway, I had a chat with my supervisor, who asked me to print out corrected Figures, which he then forwarded on to the examiners. I also had a substantial list of typos and minor corrections which I handed to the examiners at the beginning of the viva. They were quite surprised, because they had only spotted a few. In any event, it didn't seem to be a big issue, and I passed subject to minor corrections. By the time you submit your thesis, you've read it (wholly or partially) so many times that it can be hard to see the wood for the trees, so I wouldn't beat yourself up about it. By the time I'd completed my corrections I had found even more typos, but the important thing is that the final version of my thesis, which will be available for the world to see, is (hopefully!) a typo-free zone.
Try not to panic! I had an average of one typo per page! Including one that changed the meaning of a significant result (I had the groups the wrong way round).
I took a list with me to the viva but decided not to volunteer it unless they brought it up. In the end I passed with very minor corrections. They'd found about 10 typos, compared to my list of 100+ and I quietly corrected them all before submission of the bound copy.
I've still found a couple of extra typos in the final copy which is more annoying as I can't do anything about them!
don't worry about it. everyone has typos. i had far more typos than 50, but they loved my ideas so i was ok and got minors which really were just the typos. the typos also didn't put them in a negative frame of mind, it was more like: silly kid you are, don't do it again. as long as you're ok on the content-front you don't have anything to worry about. before the viva everyone feels stressed about every little thing, but you'll be ok really. i didn't give mine a list of typos but admitted of course that there were more than supposed to be....
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