Proofreading can fix your paper. Even the awards-winning writers require editing help before publishing their novels. The same way is with the students. The only difference is that most students do their editing by themselves. Those who neglect this important step risk to lose their grades, which are especially important at college and university. Your paper deserves personal attention too. That’s why we’ve decided to talk a little bit more about editing – a topic, which is rarely discussed online. Most of us know that writing skills are critical for performing writing assignment. But only a few realize the importance of proofreading and editing.
Today, we’re going to teach you how to edit a paper in a proper and faster way, but earn higher grades. In case you suspect you’re still quite bad in editing, it may be a good idea to search for research paper editing helper which is a professional service of qualified writers and editors.
And now, let’s learn the fastest, and the most effective proofreading and editing strategy to save your precious time and to achieve effective results.
How to Proofread and Edit Your College Papers at Home
You can proofread anything (essays, lab reports, research papers, application letters, business plans, dissertations, etc.) if you know a couple tricks on how to do it correctly. You don’t require special skills or knowledge to be good at it. All you need is a bit of patience and a few minutes.
Here’s a brief guide to 5 simple steps, which you should accomplish in order to get a polished, error-free paper.
- The first and the most important advice is to divide your paper into several parts. Read one paragraph at a time. You will read the whole paper a little bit later when smaller, technical errors will be excluded. When you’ve read a paragraph, you need to go back to it once more. Read it again, looking for spelling or grammar mistakes.
- Read slowly. Do not rush in order to finish the editing faster. When you read faster, your brain doesn’t notice those mistakes, which were made because of the speed of writing. For example, such typos occur in very simple words, which consist of 3-5 letters only. Then, read that paragraph one more time, but a little bit quicker, trying to catch the words, which sound strange or don’t fit the sentence. You’ll probably find some definitions, which can be replaced by the synonyms. Make sure that paragraph is well-organized and the words are used in a logical order.
- Check the transition between different paragraphs. The transition between each paragraph should be smooth and the thesis should be backed up with the strong evidence.
- If a paper is too long to revise it as a whole, divide it into several parts, giving yourself little breaks between proofreading each of them. One more way to make a proofreading process a lot easier is by using a ruler. Just take any ruler you have, place it under the sentence you’re reading now and follow it through the whole paper. This will help you to stay focused even if something distracts you from revision or the moment you decide to make a break.
- Distract yourself from a paper for a couple of hours or even days. Then, go back to it and read one more time. This time, you should read a paper as a whole without dividing it into several parts. Then, ask your friend or family members to read your writing too. Let them highlight the words, sentences or paragraphs, which sound strange to them. Then, ask them to listen to your paper, while you’re reading it aloud. Does it sound natural? Allow them to give some recommendations.
Remember, when you don’t proofread your own paper you risk to miss very simple, but very nasty mistakes, which can make you look silly and destroy all your efforts, even if the paper is perfect in terms of content. So, you have to go back to your paper after you’ve written it to revise it by yourself first. Find your mistakes before your professor does.
