Proofreading
Activity
Most novice writers feel uncomfortable about proof reading because they don't feel that they know every rule of grammar and punctuation. Further, they know they won't catch every mistake. Still, there are a lot of things that you can catch for a writer that he or his spellchecker will have missed, and you do not have to be an expert to catch them.
Still, if you want more help with mastering punctuation and formal errors, you can begin by consulting Andrea Lunsford's and Robert Connors' Twenty Most Common Errors. This resource lists and explains the 20 most common formal errors in punctuation and usage. If you check it out, note that the page will open in a new browser window.
One way to become a better proofreader, for yourself and others, is to learn about two or three of the errors you are not familiar with, and try to spot them in your own writing and your proofing partners' works.
What follows below is a series of steps and things you can look for when proofreading. You can do some of these or all of these for a writer, depending upon what stage her essay is at and what kind of response she needs. These are not all easy to do, and you will likely need help at some point. If you do, come to the Writing Center and we can work through these with you.
Work in teams of two or three. Do all the steps outlined below for one another.
Final Draft Proofing
Style:
Things to look for and to highlight in the paper for the
writer: - Long phrases that can
be replaced by a single word, for example:
Due to the fact that becomes because.
For further examples of such phrases, consult Robert Day's Words to Avoid/Words to Use Insteadm which will come up in a new browser window.
-
Lack of strong verbs that obscure the gist of what is being
said. For example, compare the two sentences below (verbs are in bold),
noting over use of the to be verb (is, was, are, were) in first sentence:
There are many reasons why a person
who is tired is mistake prone, including because
it is harder for them to maintain focus and concentration.
Tired people make mistakes because they cannot
concentrate.
For further help in working out weak verbs, consult this handout on Richard Lanham's Paramedic Method.
Copyediting
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Read the writing outloud to someone else (the writer perhaps)
so you can both listen for odd sounding sentences. Reading out loud
will help you youcatch common keyboard mistakes, like repeated
words repeated words,which often occur when a writer cuts and pastes
or backspaces in a hurry.
-
Check the spelling by reading from the last word in the paper
to the first, looking at each word one at a time. Look especially for sound
alike errors: it's/its; hear/here; their/they're; and so on. It's better
to write without contractions in medical and scientific writing, so your
first step should be to convert contractions, which will help you recognize
some sound alike errors (it's becomes it is, for example). Very often writers
get in the clicking habit with a spellchecker, and can accidentally "correct"
something that was already correct. A recent case happened in the Writers'
Center when a student substituted the word 'Author' for the name 'Arthur'
at the spellchecker's urging. And so it came to pass that in her paper,
Death of a Salesman was written by the great playwright, Author
Miller.
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Check for such things as possesive apostrophes (muscle's
tendon); make sure commas occur with conjunctions (and, but, or, yet,
nor) that join sentences . Most people can recognize these. If you
think something else might be wrong, but you are not sure, copy the sentence
verbatim and post it to the Writing Center's Questions About Your Writing
forum. We'll answer you in a day or sooner.
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