Essay Proofreading: A Professionally-Written Manual


When you are talking about your academic career, never take any risks with low-quality instructions. If you are proofreading your essay, only follow a professionally written guide you can trust. This article will show you the steps to essay proofreading.

Essays must be carefully and meticulously proofread and then edits would need to be made. There is a lot more involved in good essay proofreading than just reading it over and seeing if it sounds good or is free of spelling errors. You must also check for use of proper grammar, punctuation, word usage, style, logical flow, etc.

Steps to proof reading an essay


  1. Keep a proofreading log, using it to keep track of the common errors you find in your writing. It makes it much more efficient for next time you’re proofreading because you can look for those first. Even if you’re proofreading someone else’s essay, there are common errors across the board for most writers.
  2. Read the essay out loud. It helps you slow down the reading speed and you will actually spot errors this way that you may not have seen just reading it silently. This is a valuable activity and worth taking the time to do.
  3. Listen to someone else while they read your essay aloud. There may be places that give the other reader difficulty while they’re reading. Maybe a clumsy sentence you didn’t catch when you went through it. Maybe the sentence structure could be improved.
  4. Take notes as you go, whether you are reading it out loud or someone else is. Write down errors or improvements as you see them so you don’t forget.
  5. Space some time in between writing your essay and proofreading it. This way you are looking at it with what they call “new eyes” and you will be able to do a more efficient proofreading job.
  6. Proofread for the biggest things first, because if you need to edit sentences then you will want to leave spelling until last. Otherwise you will do the work twice. When you revise sentences you may generate spelling, grammar or word usage errors.
  7. Finally, read your paper backwards, one sentence at a time. This allows you to inspect each sentence on its own and think about whether it makes sense before you go on to the next one.

After all the above corrections have been made on the essay and it has been revised, read once more to check logical flow.

 
 
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