Students always get nervous before submitting their assignments. After all, a (%) of their academic grades depends on the success of their work.
Luckily there is a way to be sure of your work’s success. You guessed it – PROOFREADING.
So, let’s explain What Proofreading Entails?
Proofreading is the second stage of revising your paper. It comes after the editing process and enables students to review their work one final time before dispatching it to their professor.
Students can remove lingering or ignored grammatical flaws, spelling errors, and other writing inconsistencies through proper proofreading.
Moreover, with proper proofreading, students can achieve accuracy in their paper structuring to ensure the message gets easily conveyed to the reader.
Most students hire geography assignment experts to proofread (and edit) their papers properly and make them submission ready.
The process does speed up things considerably and makes your final copy worthy of top grades and acknowledgement from your professor.
However, you can polish your written assignments without hiring professional editors and proofreaders from a top assignment writing help platform.
Here’s a look at what includes in the Proofreading Process.
- Checking and improving overall writing quality.
- Removing left-over grammatical, punctuation, typos, etc.
- Formatting the paper and removing ill sentence constructions to achieve consistency in language
- Correcting line and word spacing, capitalisation, spelling errors etc.
Moreover, proofreading helps writers avoid the common extremities of caring too little or too much about their content.
While caring little about your work is an issue, sometimes, caring too much about the written content can pose a problem too.
- It causes writers to second-guess their writing skills.
- It makes them obsess over their compiled assignment draft.
- And it delays their submission as they are constantly perfecting their work.
Ideally, if you have proofed your work several times and found no noticeable errors- confidently release it for the world to see.
Of Course, There Is One Tip to Remember.
It’s best not to edit and proofread your work immediately after finishing it. Take a small break to replenish your brain and return to doing it with a fresh mind. Alternatively, you can do it the next day (if time is left).
Doing so will allow you to identify noticeable writing blemishes more efficiently and enable quality proofreading.
Some students even polish their work using a grammar checker/proofreading tool! This method works too, but with one condition. You must manually proofread your work first. Only after doing so should you check it with the software.
This way, you can accomplish comprehensive and accurate proofreading before submission.
Useful Proofreading Tips to Polish Your Written Copies
1. Revise Your Work from Backwards
Many field experts recommend proofreading your final work backwards. Doing so lets you focus on each sentence and derive if it’s making sense and is easy to follow.
Ideally, you don’t need to do it immediately after writing. Do it after taking some time off to recharge yourself (as suggested above). That way, you will detect issues more efficiently and know if all sentences and stanzas are understandable to your readers.
2. Pay Attention to All Writing Blemishes
When proofreading, pay attention to all potential writing blemishes. Often, we overlook missing commas or use wrong words or vague pronouns when revising the written work. But that only happens when you proofread in haste.
It would help if you kept sufficient time at hand for proofreading. Doing so will allow you to detect writing flaws without straining your eyes.
Here are common writing blemishes you must look for.
- Improper pronouns
- Missing comma or semi-colon
- Capitalisation issue
- Missing prepositions or verb endings
- An unnecessary pronoun or tense shifts
- Fragmented sentences
- Lacking agreement between verb and pronoun
- Misplaced or dangling modifiers
- Too long sentences
- Missing subjects like full-stop or exclamation
- Spelling mistakes
- Typos
- Ill stanza structure
- Poor sentence construction
- Wrong choice of words(confusion with homonyms)
- Wrong use of synonyms
3. Double Check Facts, Dates, Event Times and Aptness of Title
Re-checking each of these crucial data won’t take long. Confirm with Google and make corrections if necessary.
While at it, also check the references included. See if they are correct or if the source cited is reliable.
To improve readability, include a table or chart to depict crucial dates, event times or topic-centric facts.
Lastly, check the suitability of the title. Confirm if key phrases spell correctly or not. Pay attention to the title’s length. Also, check if the title is per character count in the guidelines.
All these little things go a long way in making your written assignment flawless and high-scoring.
4. Keep an Eye Out for Repetitive Information
Many students make the mistake of repeating information in their papers. But doing so doesn’t bode well for them, as each assignment comes with a word limit.
Repeating information means taking up extra words without adding anything new and valuable to your paper.
Don’t make this mistake. That said, even if you have, focus on such repetitive information when proofreading your final copy.
Remember, when presenting your work to your readers, you must value their time. So, present your information succinctly and ensure every stanza informs them of something meaningful.
Your readers and your paper reviewer will appreciate your efforts.
5. Check the Starting Word of Every Stanza
Your research paper must engage from the first line itself. However, if the audiences notice the first word is similar in several stanzas (even simultaneous ones), they might lose interest and leave your paper half-read.
Moreover, editors and proofreaders offering instant assignment help
If several paragraphs and sentences start with the same word, your work becomes less dynamic and appealing.
Of course, there is no need to pull your hair out due to frustration. There’s an easy solution for this.
Focus on the first word of each stanza when proofreading your work. Replace those words with proper synonyms or rewrite the sentence differently without altering its meaning. Also, check the next sentence to see if the flow remains intact.
You’re a writer. So, use your creativity to develop interesting phrases and ways to start every paragraph. To spice things up, you can include a relevant stat or data about the sub-header.
That way, you can educate the readers on relevant facts or data on the sub-head coverage before entering the explanatory part.
6. After Proofreading, REVISE AGAIN LOUDLY
Always proofread your work several times over (and loudly) before deeming it suitable for submission. Human error is always possible, even in files that have been revised several times.
So, even though you may have finished proofreading (and correcting) your work, revise it again. Think of yourself as a reader who will likely spend 5-10 minutes on your post. So, read it loudly and in one go. See if everything makes sense.
Furthermore, ask a peer or friend review your final copy. Ask them to provide unbiased feedback. This way, you will know whether your work is comprehensible for a reader and acceptable per quality standards.
Final Thoughts
Proofreading is a skill that not many students can perfect. However, it’s not impossible to learn and perfect either.
Use these tips if you want to improve your editing and proofreading skills. It could seem laborious mind-numbing, and time-consuming. But, eventually, when you do get an A+ on your assignment, you will understand that these efforts were worth it.
Author’s Bio
Mila Cooper works for MyAssignmenthelp.com and offers on-demand assignment writing service to students in need. She has been in this line of work for 7 years and has a good success record. Mila specialises in Accounting and Economics and also works full time as a college professor. Besides this, Mila is a single mother of 2 daughters. She always makes time for them on weekends to bake for them and have fun with them