Proofreading is the process of reviewing the final draft of a piece of writing to ensure consistency and accuracy in grammar, spelling, punctuation, and formatting.
Before submitting your research paper, you should proofread it to look for flaws. Grammatical and typographical errors are both possible. And proofreading can help you find issues with your paper’s flow for instance concept and idea that do not flow in an orderly manner can be reordered during this process.
Before Proofreading Your Paper
- Ensure that before you begin you have revised your work at least twice. If you there is still work to be done on the overall focus, growths, and layout of the document, parts of the paper, or of individual paragraphs, don’t make edits at the sentence and word levels.
- Between writing and editing, set your text away for a bit. You’ll find errors more quickly if you put some time between drafting your paper and proofreading it.
- Prior to checking for errors, remove extraneous words. If a shorter term works just as well as a more elaborate one, try to avoid utilizing it throughout your paper. Overly complicated sentence structure and vocabulary are more difficult to edit than simple, clear language.
- Understand what to look for. Based on your professors’ critiques of your earlier drafts of the paper or of papers from other colleagues, make a list of the errors you need to watch out for. This will make it easier for you to spot patterns of errors that keep happening.
During Proofreading
Consider the following to ensure you find all the mistakes in your paper:
- Instead of working from a computer screen, use a printout. In addition to saving your eyes from the strain of staring at a computer screen, proofreading from a printout enables you to quickly navigate to any errors that may have occurred repeatedly throughout the text.
- Read aloud. You’ll hear other errors that you might not have seen when reading silently, and it’s especially useful for identifying run-on sentences. Reading your essay aloud also encourages you to assume the reader’s perspective and comprehend the work as your audience would.
- Cover the lines below the one you’re reading with a ruler or a piece of blank paper. You avoid missing potential errors by using this strategy.
- During the proofreading process, every punctuation mark should be circled or highlighted. This makes you focus on each mark you used and consider why you used it in each sentence and paragraph. This tactic is especially useful if you frequently misuse or overdo punctuation, such as commas or semicolons.
- To uncover errors you’re likely to make, use the search tool on your computer. You can recognize typical mistakes more quickly by using the search [find] feature of your word processor. For instance, you can conduct a search for terms or phrases you frequently use and decide whether to keep them or replace them with synonyms if you find that you overuse them or use the same qualification repeatedly.
- If you frequently make mistakes, check for each type of error independently, ranking them in importance from most to least, and use whatever method suits you best to recognize that type of error. To check for sentence fragments, read the passage through once [backwards, sentence by sentence]; once again [forward], to ensure that the subjects and verbs correspond; and once more [perhaps using a computer search for “this,” “it,” and “they,” to trace pronouns to antecedents.
- Use a computer spell checker or finish by reading each word backwards. However, keep in mind that homonym errors (such as “they’re,” “their,” or “there”) and some typos (such as “he” when you meant to write “the”) won’t be caught by a spell checker.
- Set aside adequate time for this task. Speeding through writing and editing causes numerous mistakes to be made, therefore attentively reviewing your writing will help you find mistakes you might otherwise miss. Always read your work aloud slowly. If you read the paper quickly enough, you won’t have enough time for your eyes to catch mistakes.
- You should get a scholar/critique to read your paper. Another set of eyes will find mistakes in your writing that you would have otherwise missed.
Personalizing the process of proofreading
Along with the aforementioned advice, you may improve the effectiveness of your proofreading by tailoring it to the areas of your writing that need improvement. For instance, I’m still prone to subject-verb agreement mistakes. Accept that you probably won’t be able to check for everything, so be honest with yourself about your normal trouble spots and search for each type of error separately. Here’s how to go about it:
- Reason out the type of errors you typically make
- Learn how to correct these errors
- Come up with methods that would help you find and fix these mistakes comfortably
- When you proofread, do it in bits. Don’t determine to proofread the entire paper in a day, or in a single sitting
Ensuring you get your project right and make good grades has been the major focus of Academic Hive. You can book a session with our Consultant if you need any help with regards to your research work
